Girl Power

It was just after 8:30 in the morning on the day after Christmas, early enough that lingering fog was still busy turning into hazy sunlight that illuminated a single golfer on the driving range at the Village Course at Kapalua.

We should have seen this one coming. Michelle Wie is 14 years old and already stands alone. A golf prodigy straight out of the ninth grade, Wie, with a swing so sweet it should be poured like syrup on pancakes, has been compared to an early-teen Tiger Woods.

On this day, she sent one golf ball after another soaring off into the distance. Standing silently behind her were her parents, B.J. and Bo, so close that their elbows were touching.

Someday, maybe even this week, the Michelle Wie phenomenon is really going to take off, and this quiet snapshot of Team Wie in the early morning will remind us all how simple it once was.

“She’s got the touch, the feel and the power,” said Wie’s coach, Gary Gilchrist of the David Leadbetter Golf Academy. “All she needs is time. And she’s got plenty of that.”

Wie, expected to be the next big thing in golf , already is big. She regularly hits drives more than 300 yards, partly because she stands an even 6 feet tall in her size-9 1/2 men’s golf shoes.

And this week at Waialae Country Club, Wie is going to walk in those shoes where no teenage girl has gone before, playing against male professionals in the Sony Open on the PGA Tour.

Wie won’t be the first female to play a modern-day men’s pro event, since Annika Sorenstam beat her to the tee amid much ballyhoo at the Colonial tournament last May in Fort Worth. But Wie will certainly be the youngest. And even though Ernie Els, one of the top stars in the game, is on hand to defend his title at Waialae, it would not be outlandish to expect Wie to hold her own in the attention department.

“I think she’s a phenomenal player,” Els said. “It’s a hell of an achievement for her, at 14, to play with us. I mean, can you imagine? I played my first British Open at 19, and I was way out of my place.”

When she’s not on the golf course, Wie’s place is in the ninth grade at Punahou School, a $12,050-a-year private school. In two honors courses and with a 3.5 grade-point average, Wie thinks she knows what to expect when she tees up against the top male golfers in the world.

“There might be less pressure on me playing Sony because people are pretty used to women playing by now,” Wie said. “If they’re strong enough and they want to do it, I don’t see why they can’t do it. I think women playing the PGA will be common in the future.”

Gilchrist said that those who question why Wie is playing against the male pros are missing the boat.

“Just think about what she’s doing for junior golf,” he said. “Then think about how many thousands of kids might use her as a role model for their own dreams.”

What Wie and her parents have been focusing on since she received a sponsor’s invitation into her hometown PGA Tour event two months ago is for Michelle to make the cut. That is, to be among the 70 players with the lowest total scores after two rounds. Last year, the cut was at par 140 -- and such former major champions as Fred Couples, Rich Beem, Steve Jones, Larry Mize and Craig Stadler failed to reach it.

“I’d be very glad to make the cut,” Wie said. “And if I don’t, there’s always another week.

“I saw some poll somewhere that said 70% of the people didn’t think I’d make the cut. So if I miss it, nobody’s going to be really sad, or surprised. Me, maybe.”

But what if this 14-year-old girl does make the cut on a course she has played dozens of times? What if she beats some PGA Tour pros?

“If you want to beat me, then play better than me, that’s all I’ve got to say,” Wie said. “They have more experience than me, they’ve been out there week after week. I won’t be that sad over losing to someone because I know they’re better than me, and I know I have to play better than them to beat them. The same goes for them.”

Wie isn’t going to surprise anyone. The pros know all about her. At the Sony Open a year ago, she tried to qualify and didn’t get in the field, but still caused some jaws to drop when she showed up at the practice range, then played in the pro-am, and began banging golf balls into the stratosphere.

Tom Lehman gave her a nickname, “the Big Wiesy,” and with her new moniker, Michelle embarked on a golf odyssey that was groundbreaking and headline grabbing, not to mention, well, what?

“Hectic,” Wie said. “We were everywhere, like week after week.”

B.J. Wie estimated that he had spent $70,000 on Michelle’s golf in 2003, when the family traveled together to the six LPGA tournaments for which she received sponsors’ exemptions, plus the U.S. Women’s Open. She made the cut in six of the seven tournaments. Along the way, she kept busy setting records.

In March, she shot a 66 at the Nabisco Championships, the first major tournament on the LPGA calendar. It equaled the lowest score ever shot by an amateur in a women’s major. That put Wie, then 13, in the final group on Sunday. She didn’t win, but she made an impression.

“If she continues to develop as a person and as a player, her future is very, very bright.... How’s that for a statement of the obvious?” said Ty Votaw, commissioner of the LPGA Tour.

Wie turned more heads when she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links championship as the youngest champion ever. She also tied for fifth at the U.S. Women’s Open qualifier and wound up as the youngest player ever to make the cut at the U.S. Open.

Wie played two men’s pro events on sponsors’ exemptions, one on the Canadian Tour and one on the Nationwide Tour. She missed the cut in each of them but gained valuable experience.

There was one experience, though, that Wie would like to forget. At the U.S. Open, she had a run-in with LPGA pro Danielle Ammaccapane, who angrily accused Michelle and B.J. of improper etiquette during play. B.J., who served as Michelle’s caddie, also had a dispute with Ammaccapane’s father.

“It still bothers me because I haven’t felt comfortable since that incident,” B.J. Wie said. “Michelle just says it’s over and forget it.”

Wie has received invitations to 12 LPGA tournaments in 2004 and is planning to play in six, as many as she is allowed. But as good as Wie is, players such as Woods and Davis Love III question whether Wie is taking on too much too soon. They suggest that she play on the junior level and learn to dominate the field. The eight tournaments Wie played with sponsors’ exemptions last year were one more than Woods played in his entire amateur career.

“I think it’s pretty neat that she’s playing, and I wish her all the luck in the world,” Woods said. “I think it’s good experience to play against people who are better than you. You do learn that way. But I also look at the philosophy that you need to play and win too, learn the art of winning. My dad was a big believer in that. I think that’s what she needs to try to do.”

Wie is very clear on what she needs to do.

“It’s like my hobby, playing in men’s tournaments, because they’re really exciting and give me something new to try,” she said. “I want to go to the next level. I don’t want to restrict myself to one level.

“My philosophy is that I can struggle in professional tournaments as much as in my amateur years. The rookies that go on the LPGA, they always waste a year or two trying to figure out what to do. I don’t want to waste time. I just want to get ready for the future. I don’t want to get stuck in the present.”

Chances are that Wie’s future will involve a great deal of money. She says she wants to attend Stanford and stay all four years. In fact, her parents insist on it. But once she turns pro, experts say, Wie should be able to cash in quickly on endorsements.

“She’s the type of athlete that women could use as a model for years and years,” said Bob Williams, president of Burns Sports, a company that puts celebrities into business deals. “She’s the type of athlete that Nike would dearly want to have.”

That’s probably true, said Bob Wood, president of Nike Golf.

“She’s very marketable,” said Wood, adding that Wie’s Korean heritage would play into Nike’s marketing in South Korea, the fourth-largest golf market in the world. “It’s obvious she’s such a great physical specimen and a fantastic player.”

Williams said Wie also would be a natural promoting food conglomerates, luxury automobiles and computers, to name a few products.

“It will be interesting to see who comes to the table,” he added. “She could be the LPGA version of Tiger Woods. There are a lot of opportunities for Michelle, depending on what age she turns pro. She says she’s going to go to college for four years, but we’ll see.”

In the meantime, Wie has her hands full with ninth grade. Up at 6 a.m., her first 55-minute class is math at 7:30. That’s one of her hard ones, Wie says, along with biology and geometry. English is sometimes hard and sometimes easy, but this semester it’s hard because the class is reading “Beowulf,” and the archaic language is tricky.

She loves shopping and going to the mall with friends, who tease her because of her “golfer’s tan.”

“I’ve got the whitest feet in school,” she said. “I’m embarrassed.”

If Michelle isn’t watching “Smallville” or “Punk’d” on television, or listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, she plays video games on her Nintendo GameCube. She has read two of the Harry Potter books. There are no special boys in her life, and for good reason.

“I don’t want to go out with anyone shorter than me,” she said. “So there’s only seven boys in my grade not shorter than me, and none of them are really cute.”

B.J. Wie is a professor at the University of Hawaii, but he is on sabbatical until the fall. Bo Wie is a real estate agent. Neither of them is looking forward to the time when Michelle leaves for college and lives in an apartment.

“I want to move with her,” Bo said.

“We’ll rent space with Michelle,” B.J. said.

Separation from their daughter is still years away, but the years have flown by since Michelle, at 4, picked up a golf club for the first time. B.J. and Bo bought a set of junior clubs, but she grew so quickly, they had to start cutting down their own clubs for her.

During summers, they played every weekend. Michelle also played tennis and basketball. She used her golf grip on the tennis racket and hit the ball with authority.

Michelle said she has a grip on both parts of her life right now, on the golf course or being just a regular kid at Punahou School, albeit the most famous one.

“When I’m at school, I don’t even want to think about golf,” she said. “It’s just school and my friends. When I’m on the golf course, I don’t really feel like a ninth-grader. It’s kind of hard to be normal when everybody knows you. In Hawaii, they kind of do.

“But overall, I think I am pretty normal. I go to school. I’m not home-schooled, I’m not tutored.”

And don’t even mention burnout to her. She says if she thinks about burnout, she’ll burn out, so she doesn’t think about burnout. What’s important to Michelle, besides golf, is getting into Stanford. She said that even though the classes would be hard, it would still be fun because of the lifestyle change.

“You’ve living with your parents through high school, and then you suddenly have to make a living and do everything by yourself,” she said. “College is like an environment where you live by yourself, but you can do everything. It’s like a transition. It’s like an essay I wrote this year, called ‘Why Athletes Turn Pro Too Early.’ ”

Wie said she also wrote an essay last year, but on a much different topic: “Why Chocolate Is Good for You.”

She hopes to qualify for this year’s U.S. Amateur Public Links tournament, a men’s event, because the winner receives an invitation to play in the 2005 Masters. Wie has an unusual dream for a 14-year-old girl. She wants to play in the Masters. And in her dream, she wins it, then doesn’t ask for the traditional green jacket given to the winner.

“I’d take a green skirt,” she said.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Wie’s 2003 Pro Record

How Michelle Wie has fared in professional play:

*--* LPGA Tournament Scores Total Finish Nabisco 72-74-66-74 286 T-9 Chick fil-A 72-70-71 213 T-33 Shop-Rite 71-72-72 215 T-52 U.S. Open 73-73-76-76 298 T-39 Kroger Classic 73-72 145 Cut Safeway 69-72-73 214 T-28 Nine Bridges 85-78-70 233 69 Canadian Tour Bay Mills Open 74-79 153 Cut Nationwide Tour Boise Open 78-76 154 Cut

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