***UPDATE*** Matt Biondi at Cybergolf got this great quote from one LPGA player about Wie getting a sponsor’s exemption to the Samsung World Championship. “We’re working our butts off while it’s just handed to her.”
Matt, I think that player meant “handed to her without her earning it…”
Besides her getting an exemption to the Samsung, Ron Sirak was right. Michelle Wie will return to the John Deere, the tournament where she last left in an ambulance after suffering from heat exhaustion.
This time, I understand where she’s coming from. While I do not support this ridiculous “if one woman makes the cut in a half-field men’s event, then all women play golf as well as men” dog and pony show, and further do not support the meritocracy of earning a spot being shredded, I see why Michelle chose to return here. If I had been carried out of a place on an ambulance, I’d want to return for revenge. I’d feel I had something to prove.
When I was younger, I competed in a slalom race at Sugarbush North in Vermont. The race was held on the lift line of the main slope on a trail called “The Cliffs.” I fell not once on the run, but five times. I was so slow, the kid behind me had actually started down, not knowing I was still hacking up the run like my Depends-wearing, Farina-eating grandma and he crashed into me for the fifth fall.
I swore revenge on “The Cliffs” and vowed to return and turn in a clean run at next year’s event, even if I didn’t win. Believe you me, I felt like Buckner walking back into Shea the following year, but I kept my word. On one of the tougherst runs at either Sugarbush or Sugarbush North, I turned in a flawless run and erased the bitter memory of my rather public competitive flame out.
That’s what Michelle is really trying to do this time. She feels she has something to prove after a silly rule made her take that ambulance ride and resulted in the pic of her on the stretcher plastered over every paper in America.
Nevertheless, I will take this opportunity to remind everyone what Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz said before LAST YEAR’S John Deere. In his piece titled “time for Michelle to move on” he said if she failed to make the cut at last year;s JD, she should pack it in for a while. He wrote:
“Unless she makes the cut, this week’s John Deere Classic should be the last time Michelle Wie accepts a sponsor’s exemption to play in a PGA Tour event until she becomes the best woman golfer in the world. This seemingly buzz-killing assertion is made with the full knowledge that there is an undeniable upside to Wie playing in men’s events.”
Wie has not proved she is anywhere near the best woman golfer in the world. As Diaz said, her game – so often trumpeted as transcendent – is in truth similar to many women, for example Brittany Lincicome.
Wie now know wie’ve been had. She is merely average and she is overhyped. Ask the players. The PGA rank and file voted her most over rated golfer by a five to one margin over the player who came in second in the voting.
Diaz had this great line as well:
“But when it comes to Wie competing on the PGA Tour now, the main criteria should no longer be potential or marketability. It’s time to ask the simple question, “Does she have enough game?” I say no, and I doubt seriously that she ever will.
At the HBSC Women’s World Match Play Championship last weekend, I watched Wie practice near Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb. Certainly, Wie hits it longer than either, but the difference isn’t as dramatic as her image might suggest. Bottom line, what I didn’t see was the kind of ball speed and flight produced by rank-and-file PGA Tour players.”
I understand her wanting to wash away the terrible memory of last year. But she should spend more time on the LPGA, like she will this week at the Ginn Invitational, her first start of 2007. Now we will see exactly how well she competes in the tour she said a while back would bore her and not provide enough of a challenge. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. She needs to WIN – not finish top 5, not finish top 3, WIN to earn a chance to compete with the men. Without that pedigree, she is unfairly cashing in on backroom favors and looks more and more like a politically correct windmill tilt than a professional golfer earning a living through her merit. The other players are working their butts off and it’s handed to her.
For the record, here’s a fifteen year old WINNING a pro tournament. Not “making the cut, not “finishing top whatever…WINNING. Where is the buzz? Is there no buzz because he’s male?
While I think it’s ridiculous for Wie to continue to embarrass herself in PGA tournaments, I don’t think it’s fair to criticize her for playing on sponsor’s exemptions. Every week male PGA golfers get the same exemption to play, like current player John Daly, and we never hear a peep from their PGA colleagues.