It's easy to see why some people think Michelle Wie is more of a distraction than a future face of the men's golf tour.

Earlier this month, the 15-year-old female golfer won three matches in the men's U.S. Amateur Public Links tournament before losing in the quarterfinals. Had she won the title, Wie would have become the first woman to be invited to play in the Masters, one of professional golf's most prestigious events.

Having won the women's division of this competition at the age of 13, Wie earned her way into the men's amateur title competition this year by outplaying 83 of 84 men in a qualifying tournament.

When Clay Ogden, the 20-year-old who defeated Wie, went on to win the Public Links championship, most of the spectators and journalists who showed up for his match with the Punahou School junior were long gone.

It was that way, too, a week earlier as Wie tried to become the first woman in 60 years to make the cut (advance beyond the first two rounds of play) in a men's professional golf tournament. More than 10,000 people showed up to see whether she would accomplish this feat in the John Deere Classic.

USA Network and NBC teamed up to cover her second round in that event from start to finish. When she failed to advance beyond that point, the extended TV coverage of the tournament ended.

Wie's critics want her to stay on her side of professional golf's gender divide. They think she's an aberration — an oddity who has been thrust upon the male golf game by overbearing parents, greedy tournament organizers and TV executives. Many of her detractors treat Wie as a golf novelty — a spindly young girl who can hit the golf ball farther than most men can.

But Wie is no Eddie Gaedel, the 43-inch-tall pinch-hitter that St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck sent to bat in a 1951 baseball game. Her entry into men's golfing events shouldn't be viewed as a sporting sideshow, like the footrace Olympic Gold Medalist Jesse Owens ran in 1936 against a horse in Cuba. Nor should it be seen as the latest installment of the "Battle of the Sexes" that tennis star Billie Jean King waged against Bobby Riggs in 1973.

Wie, more than any other female golfer, appears to have what it takes to break the last great barrier in pro sports: the gender line. Annika Sorenstam, the reigning top professional female golfer, who played in a single men's professional golf tournament in 2003, appears content to dominate women's golf. Wie wants to break golf's glass ceiling.

Her critics argue that she should win some women's tournaments first. One Wie-bashing journalist went so far as to say she should focus on beating her "natural competition" — women — before trying to play against men.

Playing their natural competition is what the defenders of baseball's color line wanted black baseball players to do before Jackie Robinson became the first black to play Major League Baseball. His success cleared the way for many other blacks, who until then were thought to lack what it takes to play at the same level as whites do.

Wie can do the same for professional golf. Though she failed to make the cut in two men's golf tournaments this year, she outplayed many men in those events.

Wie hopes one day to be a regular competitor in the golf tournaments that men play, not those set aside for women. To ready herself, she has played in some professional and amateur golf tournaments that historically have been the preserve of men, even as she played in others against women.

By pushing herself — and the golf game — for this breakthrough opportunity, Michelle Wie deserves praise, not criticism.