For Michelle Wie and those who follow her, the wait goes on.
Not long ago, Wie was supposed to do for women’s golf what Tiger Woods did for the men’s tour: Become a dominant, charismatic star whose very presence guarantees that any tournament becomes a mini-major.
Seven years after she finished in the top 10 at the LPGA major Kraft-Nabisco at age 13, and six years after she shot a 68 in a PGA Tour event, the former child prodigy has yet to become a consistent performer. Or anything close to the can’t-miss, game-altering star of stars she was expected to be by now.
Despite her US$10 million-plus in endorsement deals — no other US female golfer earns anything close to this in off-course money — she’s a golfer only half the year, a full-time Stanford student with a demanding 20-credit course load the other half.
Rather than Wie, it was a relentless Cristie Kerr who won the LPGA championship by a remarkable 12 strokes two weeks ago in a performance reminiscent of Woods’ 15-shot victory in the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach.
Wie finished 20 shots back, looking confused and not very confident at times on a demanding course that penalized inaccuracy.
Or exactly the kind of course that historic and oh-so-hot Oakmont Country Club will be when the US Women’s Open starts today in predicted 34.5°C heat.
Maybe Oakmont will be the setting where Wie’s enormous talent fully emerges, where the accuracy of her putter matches the length of her drives and the can’t-miss kid finally wins.
However, as the two spoke to reporters a few minutes apart on Tuesday, the differences in personality and state of mind between Wie and Kerr were evident.
One hopes to win; the other knows she can. One knows she’s good and intends to stay that way; the other has been told since she was 10 that she would be very good, but has yet to excel beyond occasional flashes.
Wie: “I want to win a major, so I better be ready. You know, I’m just working on my game and having fun at it. I’m trying my hardest. You know, you never know.”
Kerr: “I feel great. I can’t control what the other golfers do, but I can control what I do, and I can control what I do well enough, then I will stay there [ranked No. 1].”
Kerr played a practice round with Wie at steamy Oakmont on Monday, but she couldn’t be lured into speculating what it will take for Hawaii native Wie to win a major.
“I don’t really focus on her game too much,” she said.
A telling answer there. Wie hasn’t finished in the top 10 at a major in four years, and she’s an unremarkable 16th on the LPGA money list although she first played in a tour event eight years ago.
Certainly, she’s still got plenty of time; at a comparable age, Woods had yet to win a major, either.
However, the women’s fields are far younger than those on the men’s tour. Alexis Thompson, the latest next-big-thing, just turned pro at age 15, and there are 23 teenage golfers in the US Open field who are younger than Wie.
Already, the next generation is arriving before Wie herself has arrived.
So far, Wie’s biggest accomplishments since turning pro are winning the limited-field Lorena Ochoa Invitational last fall — her only LPGA title — and leading the US to a Solheim Cup victory (the women’s equivalent of the Ryder Cup) with a 3-0-1 record.
Not that such a resume is bad for one so young. Still, the feeling persists in the golf world: Is that all there is? And what will it take for Wie to progress from being a celebrity to being a force in the game?
David Leadbetter, Wie’s coach who is at Oakmont, predicts she might not realize her potential until the distractions and demands of college are over in two years. She expects to attend Stanford for five years.
Which means more waiting.
For now, Wie seems content to tee it up and hope for the best.
“You know, I just try and play the best I can, and hopefully my ‘A’ game will come out,” Wie said. “If it does then, hopefully, I can get up there ... Hopefully, everything will mesh together nicely and everything will work out.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier