Michelle Wie enters ANA Inspiration tournament with a healthy stretch of golf

The putt and the reaction said everything. Erasing years of frustration. Validating endless hours on the practice green and a series of swing changes. Reinforcing a belief in herself that several times in the past had virtually disappeared behind a shroud of one injury after another.

Michelle Wie could look to the future.

Wie, 28, had won four times in an LPGA Tour career that would be exceptional for most young players but had not lived up to the sky-high expectations that accompanied the teenage phenom who had six top-five finishes in major championships before she turned 17.

Three weeks ago in Singapore, she faced a 35-foot putt on the final hole of the HSBC Women’s World Championship with a chance to move into the lead and force the two players on the course behind her to birdie the hole for a tie.

She drained the putt and repeatedly pumped her fist with enthusiasm befitting a sweep of the majors. When, in the final group, Danielle Kang and Nelly Korda failed to make birdie putts, Wie had her fifth tour victory and first since the 2014 U.S. Open.

In Rancho Mirage this week for the ANA Inspiration, the tour’s first major championship of the year, Wie is doing everything she can to put the moments of waning confidence and the litany of ankle, hip, knee, neck, back and wrist injuries behind her.

“There was a lot of doubt, especially when you don’t remember the last time you haven’t felt pain,” Wie said. “It’s a hard road. Just having to change my swing so many times, working around my injuries. I thought a couple of them were going to be career-ending ….

“But I had great people around me … and we just took it slowly. Just got myself back healthy .… That was definitely my No. 1 goal.”

Kang, a close friend of Wie, understood Wie’s excitement about winning again.

“It’s a big deal to win any tournament, especially for Michelle, she’s such a public figure,” Kang said. “Any time anyone makes that kind of a putt, you should have that reaction. I love that she’s so passionate about it, because that’s what she’s about. She’s given her blood, sweat and tears into this game, and I’m so happy to see her win again.”

Wie gets collagen injections in her wrists every three or four months to battle the arthritis that began after she injured them more than 10 years ago and has been an unwelcome part of her swing since. So far, that treatment is working.

After an injury-plagued 2016, when she missed the cut or withdrew from 13 tournaments, she had eight top-10s last year. In five tournaments this year, she has had the win in Singapore, two 11th places and a tie for 22nd last week at the Kia Classic, where she shot 68-69 in the final two rounds.

Brittany Lincicome, who won the ANA Inspiration in 2009 and ’15, played with Wie in a tournament a few weeks ago and was impressed.

“Every shot was down the middle,” Lincicome said. “She never hit it off line and her putting was fantastic.

“I told her I wanted her as my Solheim Cup partner, because from 20, 15 feet, she was making every single thing. I was like, ‘I’ll drive it, you putt it, and we’ll win.’”

Wie is ninth on the tour in putts per round and has consistently improved in that department since 2015, when she was 85th.

She has taken inspiration from several PGA Tour players — including Tiger Woods, Rickie Fowler and Camilo Villegas — and occasionally plays with tour players when home in Florida.

“Just seeing what he’s gone through with his injuries, and then … how he’s hitting the ball and how he was coming back, it’s truly inspiring and motivating,” she said of Woods.

“Every time we see each other, we list off all the things: ‘How’s your ankle, how’s your back, how’s your everything?’”

And from players such as Fowler and Villegas, she sees a style of play that might have resembled the game of her youth

“The guys are more aggressive,” she said. “I tried to adopt the mentality of being aggressive, smart aggressive .… Just the mentality of it and trying to just be attacking the golf course and just play it more like a game.”

The way she might have done when, as a 14-year-old wunderkind, she missed the cut by only a shot in the PGA Tour’s SONY Open.

“I think when you’re a kid, you kind of play fearlessly,” she said. “Then as you get older … we accumulate fear, we accumulate overthinking. Sometimes you have to knock it back down and just kind of be free and have fun. Golf is a game, and that’s kind of how I’m trying to approach it.”

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