Posted on: Thursday, May 6, 2004
How long can Wie wait?
By Chris Brennan
USA Today
You can tell the most important player on the practice green by the number of people gathered around her. There are players with caddies scattered far and wide, singular souls immersed in the give-and-take of putting and chipping and retrieving the balls to start all over again.
But there, at the far end of the green, a triumvirate stands guard over a hole. Two coaches and a father with a video camera have gathered in a semicircle to watch a 14-year-old girl practice putting. This putting stroke, you immediately realize, is extremely serious business. One of the coaches doing the watching is golf guru David Leadbetter.
Another man, a guy you'd recognize in an airport because you've seen him on television, is standing beside the girl. It's Fluff, her new trophy caddie, available because his regular player, Jim Furyk, has been injured. And the girl's mother is no more than 20 feet away, her head cocked intently, taking in the whole scene.
To locate the 6-foot-tall Michelle Wie, look for the entourage. On the eve of the LPGA's Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill, to which she has received one of her six sponsors' exemptions for 2004, Wie drew the undivided attention of five adults who have come to realize this wasn't simply a practice green. It also is a makeshift launching pad for the Next Great Thing in Sports: a girl, a career, a fortune — and, for the moment, a wonderful dilemma.
Michelle Wie, the high school freshman from Punahou School, who beat 48 men at a PGA Tour event in January while missing the cut by one stroke, will be worth millions the moment she signs her name to a professional contract.
Right now, somewhere in America, her future agent is dreaming of the shoe war between Adidas and Nike, the battle of the golf balls between Titleist and Callaway.
"I think big money should be handled by mature people," she said yesterday, "and right now I am a little bit too immature for that big money. I don't think I can know how to use that money, so I think I have to get a little bit older, just get more mature, know more about life and all that, then wait until that happens."
Perhaps it's time to sign on the dotted line right now. She sure sounds mature enough to me.
Until Wie turns pro, she has nothing. Or, depending on your perspective, she has everything.
"I think I am a little bit different because everyone that said that was already professional when they said that," Wie said. "And I am not making money right now. I am just playing as a hobby, I guess. I mean, I don't think I will turn professional in, like two, three years. But right now, it's a hobby for me, it's what I want to do. It's not yet a job, and I think that I am still enjoying it because I am not making money yet."
Golf is known as a patient sport, where stars often reach their prime in their 20s and 30s and still win in their 40s. But this girl could be too much, even for golf.
How long can she wait?
How long can we?
