Golfer Michelle Wie is growing up and settling down

Reporting from Carlsbad — 

In some ways, Michelle Wie is still the teenage girl we remember bursting into the spotlight with braces and a 300-yard drive.

“I still eat Happy Meals and I’m proud to say it,” Wie said the other day at a news conference here. “I would say it’s more for the toy.”

In other ways, she’s a grown woman hardened by years in the spotlight during which the normal peaks and valleys of adolescence have played out on a national stage.

“Slowly but surely, I’m growing up,” she said. “There have been a lot of highs and lows and unfortunately those happened in a public light, but I feel like I’ve matured a lot because of that.”

Truth be told, Wie is probably somewhere in between those extremes. She’s 20 now, a communications major at Stanford who recently completed a 20-unit quarter and got a new car.

She’s also a working woman, leaving behind the trails of her youth this week to take on the adult task of earning a living by competing in the LPGA Tour’s Kia Classic beginning Thursday at La Costa Resort and Spa.

And she does so without the pressure of being a prodigy trying to live up to her potential. Last year, Wie finally began to fulfill longtime expectations. First, she starred on the U.S. Solheim Cup team in August and then won the LPGA Tour’s Lorena Ochoa Invitational for her first victory as a professional.

“Pure joy,” Wie said of that victory. “Of course there was relief. Of course it was like, ‘Finally — it took me long enough.’ Of course there was that. But it was pure joy. I was just happy. It was such a high.… I could see where I could go and what I could become.”

That brazen talent of her early teen years brought her sponsor exemptions — so many that she could play a fairly full schedule without joining a tour. She also jumped from the LPGA to the PGA Tour and often talked about how her goal was to compete against men.

But a 2007 wrist injury, which took nearly a year to heal, derailed her. She had tried to play through it but often failed to break par and sometimes failed to break 80. Critics blasted her for unrealistic ambitions.

Players sniped at her, saying she was taking a road made easy by so many exemptions instead of earning her way in to tournaments by playing good golf. Wie said she just didn’t know any better.

“I don’t think anything was ever too easy,” she said. “I don’t think my life is ever too easy. I think I was young and it was fun. Everything was really fun.”

By the end of 2008, a string of missed cuts, withdrawals and disqualifications wasn’t much fun, prompting her to commit to the LPGA Tour full time and to enter Q-School. It’s no surprise to some that the following year was her breakout.

“She’s playing one tour, one place,” said veteran golfer Juli Inkster. “That’s making her more comfortable and confident and it helped her learn how to win. That’s not easy to do when you’re playing the schedule she was playing.”

It’s certainly helped her bank account. Already sporting a sponsorship deal with Nike, she signed on with Kia Motors and McDonald’s in the last month.

Wie, who last year lost a major sponsor in Sony after years of failing to meet expectations, said what she is experiencing now is that much sweeter after so many low points.

“When you’re put through a difficult time, you learn to appreciate the good times a lot better,” she said.

There should be plenty of good times in her future, new LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan said.

“Because we’ve heard about Michelle Wie for so long, you forget that she’s still only 20,” he said. “Her best golf is ahead of her because you have to remember that she’s still a kid in a lot of ways.”

Ah yes, a kid.

Or, maybe not.

sports@latimes.com