On Oct. 5, 2005, the Wies woke up early, drove five miles south toward the sea, and checked into a suite at the Kahala Mandarin hotel, right next door to the Waialae Country Club where Michelle had burst onto the national scene with her 68 at the Sony Open the year before.

The Wies took a wood paneled elevator up to their suite, which normally goes for $1,800 to $2,000 a night, with a balcony overlooking the Pacific, and a pair of black binoculars for watching sailboats and sunbathers. As Janice, her longtime beautician, styled her hair in the bathroom, Michelle looked herself over in the mirror and beamed.

Downstairs in the hotel, outside the Maile Ballroom, her father BJ greeted friends and family with big handshakes and a toothy grin as they made their way inside, where a small army of photographers and videographers and reporters were already set up. To BJ, the hoopla felt like a wedding, albeit something of the shotgun ceremony, since the event had been put together in only three days.

Running the show for the Wies was Ken Sunshine Consultants, a self-described "boutique public relations and communications consulting firm" that represented stars such as Jon Bon Jovi, Leonardo DiCaprio and Barbra Streisand. Point man Jesse Derris, a 25-year-old Wisconsin graduate, had served in 2004 as state spokesman for John Kerry and Howard Dean, so for him the day's events had the headlong rush of a campaign advance. Derris seemed right at home, even though he had misspelled Wie on the press release.

Michelle, typically, showed no sign of worry or concern. Like any bride, she felt the day was meant to be. Today, six days shy of her 16th birthday, she would turn professional.

TRANSITION TO PRO

There was no apparent reason why Michelle couldn't handle the transition from amateur to professional with her usual aplomb. Her days were already loaded. She got to school by 7:30 each morning, and left at 2:30 for 2 1/2 hours of golf. On Tuesdays, she went to a spa for a massage, a mani/pedi, and then maybe some shopping at Ala Moana. On Saturdays and Sundays, she spent six hours at the course, and went out with friends to the mall or a movie in the evenings. She had five close friends from Punahou School, all overachievers, like her.

Yet even with the manic schedule and enough pressure to stagger your average adult, Michelle never disappointed anyone. She never seemed to crack.

This day would be no exception.

Up on the dais with her was a new member of the family. He had an easy smile, but he seemed a lot more anxious than the 15-year-old with him. When he took the microphone, sitting in a director's chair, he mistakenly announced Michelle's new priorities would be golf and then school. He caught himself, laughed, and then apologized to BJ and his wife, Bo, who also laughed. Then he turned to Michelle, blushing slightly, and said, "No, I'm not nervous."

Ross Berlin could be forgiven. He was one of many newcomers swept into the orbit of Planet Wie. An attorney by trade, educated at Wake Forest and then at Michigan State, he had joined a law firm in California, where he had quickly gravitated toward sports. While overseeing venue selection for the 1994 World Cup, Berlin learned to master the mix of sports and entertainment. He jumped from soccer to golf and continued working in stadium and arena development, always focusing on what fans wanted and athletes needed.

In 1999, he joined the PGA Tour as a vice president of sales and marketing, with responsibility for cultivating and cementing relationships with title sponsors.

For a people person, a guy with a kind word and a handshake for everyone, it was a natural fit. Then, in the summer of 2005, he got a call from the William Morris Agency. When Dave Wirtschafter, the president of the agency, bid hello from his office in Beverly Hills, Berlin wondered if this was some sort of mistake. It wasn't.

HOME OF MEGASTARS

William Morris wasn't known for managing athletes. Morris was the legendary home of megastars like Clark Gable, Will Rogers and Judy Garland. Athletes, particularly golfers, usually wound up at IMG, where Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormick had teamed up in the 1960s and revolutionized sports representation. True, Venus and Serena Williams signed up with William Morris, but they were looking beyond tennis to fashion and entertainment. In fact, it was their crossover appeal that convinced WMA to broaden its scope. So of all the surprises Berlin stumbled upon during that phone call, the least was when Wirtschafter told him his agency had a shot at representing Michelle Wie.

Wie was a perfect storm. She was only 16. She spurred debate and resentment and discussion and plenty of prediction. She was all future, all potential, all entertainment, a thrill ride and a flashpoint.

For sponsors, she could represent almost any demographic: youth, girls, women, sports fans, Americans, Asians. She was a brand-in-the-making, especially in a high-class sport where ads for Rolex and Infiniti appeared more often than those for Tide and Busch.

William Morris took note that everyone wanted to watch her, even if she didn't win. For fans, she was constant water-cooler material, especially among those who played golf regularly, who often had the most disposable income and the most time. So in a world craving for the future, she fit anyone's imagination for what the future should be.

BJ always felt his daughter was above and beyond the typical athlete. Michelle herself spoke of breaking barriers more than she spoke of winning. She wrote that she wanted to be "the first and the youngest to do things." She envisioned a life for herself beyond golf, perhaps in the fashion or modeling industry. She studied Japanese and Chinese in school, she loved to travel, and she considered majoring in business in college.

BUILDING SHELF LIFE

Consumers could look to her as a leader in style as well as substance. She could build a shelf life not just for the next 10 years on the course, but for the next 50 or 60 years all over the planet. She wouldn't be like Arnold Palmer, who was known only as a great golfer. She wouldn't even be like Tiger Woods, who was known as the ultimate champion. Wie didn't fit completely into any one athletic mold, and so, it could be argued, agencies like IMG and Octagon would have no idea what to do with her. There was simply no other athlete with so many realms to explore, so she and William Morris, an agency with a strong handle on stage and screen, were a perfect fit. Golf was only the tip of the iceberg, and what would IMG or Octagon do once she had conquered golf?

But BJ also knew very well that his daughter was still a golfer, at least for the short term. He wanted a manager who knew the game, and he wasn't going to sign with William Morris until the agency found someone who could walk in both worlds. Enter Berlin.

Easygoing yet sharp, Berlin could get along with even the most hardened of reporters. He knew the men's game — crucial for Wie's future — and he wouldn't be cowed by negotiations with global companies. Berlin had little experience as an agent, but that didn't matter when he waltzed into a New York hotel room to make his presentation to BJ and Bo about how to capitalize on such rare potential. Berlin knew how to take advantage of every aspect of sports business, from marketing to advertising to law to media. He wasn't the typical agent, or even the typical lawyer. There didn't seem to be an ounce of fakery about him. BJ and Bo and Michelle all liked Berlin immediately.

William Morris had picked the right man.

The hard part was managing the astronomical expectations.

"The most valuable attribute is yet-to-be-realized potential," said Peter Carlisle of Octagon, who ushered swimmer Michael Phelps from a 15-year-old unknown into a 23-year-old marketing megastar. "The double-edge sword is expectations raised in the media."

For Wie, expectations could not have been higher. She was destined, both in the mind of many fans and media and even herself, to cause a seismic reaction. Even if she became the best female golfer on the planet, that still might not be enough, since she spoke about playing in the Masters.

"I made my goals very high," she explained at the time all this was going on. "It's going to be very hard for me to make a men's cut. I have to practice really hard. No one has ever done it before. But I enjoy that."

The Wies seemed to relish the attention, the pressure, the buzz. Their worst fear, it seemed, was no attention at all. After the men's Public Links tournament, BJ said that skeptics "are encouraging a very small dream, and that bothers me." Michelle herself even defended those in the media who gossiped about her. "Critics are there for a reason," she said. "To point out things. Everyone has his or her own points of view. Everything isn't going to be all good or all bad."

'SHE'S GETTING OLD'

Usually, agents and public relations experts come in to manage expectations. "If you were to develop a corporate partnership," Carlisle says, "I'd say, 'Let's not talk about the next big thing. Let's make sure we control all of that.' You'd wait for her to deliver and then market against that. In golf, the longevity is insane. For a younger athlete, my strategy might be much more conservative. You can diffuse expectations and keep things quieter."

The Wies did not think that way.

"Youth goes really fast," said BJ. "She'll be 16. She's getting old."

Paula Creamer, an LPGA rookie at 18, won two tournaments in 2005 and became a budding starlet in her own right. Morgan Pressel joined the Tour in 2006, five months before her 18th birthday, and the next year won the Kraft Nabisco, making her the youngest player in LPGA history to win a major. The window in which Michelle could set a new mark was very tiny.

Michelle opened the proceedings in the Maile Ballroom by announcing that she was contributing $500,000 to the relief from Hurricane Katrina. A little later, she fielded questions from reporters. One asked her to name the biggest Pro and the biggest Con about turning pro. She couldn't name a single Con.

The Wies went to a friend's house for dinner, and then watched the media coverage of the announcement that day. Michelle paid little attention to the television. She played with her new Sony phone, gabbing with friends about what happened at school.

Few questioned the decision to turn pro. After all, millions of dollars in endorsements — serious money — would be hers for the signing of a contract once she was a professional, and a major injury as an amateur would put a huge payday like that at risk. Going pro was a no-brainer.

But what were her goals? To play in the Masters? To dominate the LPGA Tour? To break barriers, shatter stereotypes, create a whole new paradigm in sports? 

CHOOSING BEST PATH

None of those really fit neatly together. If playing in the Masters were her No. 1 priority, she could have waited another year and tried another attempt at the U.S. Amateur Public Links. Now, as a pro, that way in was out. If she wanted to dominate the LPGA Tour by age 20, as her father had recently stated was her No. 1 goal, she would have to focus on that — go to Q-School, get a card and become a full-fledged member of the LPGA. But that went against her desire to "make people think" by competing against men. "That's what motivates me," she said, "How I might influence other people's lives, how I might make an impact on the world."

Her goal, it seemed, was to do everything, and to do it as quickly as possible. And that tall order was to be accomplished by a teenage girl who was still a full-time student who had no idea of the stresses and complexities of the fishbowl world she was about to enter, with only her equally unprepared parents and a rookie agent to guide her.

"If there was ever a golfer who should have gone down the center of the fairway, it would be her," Golf World columnist John Hawkins said after Wie's signing. "Go with IMG or Octagon and let the thing unfold instead of going with William Morris, which has no golf experience. I wouldn't have signed with a Hollywood star bureau. I just wonder what her priorities are. To be famous?  Or a great golfer? Fame is such a cheap, low bar. At some point fame seemed to become more important than greatness. I think she's a little afraid. I think she's gotten some bad advice."

The choice of William Morris made a statement: the Wies' goal was to do everything — all of the above. Choosing IMG or Octagon would have provided a safety net, or at least guardrails. Choosing William Morris fit with the absolute best-case scenario. If Michelle could do anything and everything, without a stumble, William Morris was the right agency.

BJ Wie had prepared his daughter for unqualified success, without protecting her from possible failure.