Wie Finally Had Enough

Have Wie reached the end of the story? I don’t think so. I think sometime down the road wie’ll have the redemption. I think someday Michelle will win on the LPGA tour, make lifelong friends and make a contribution to golf. But there is alot of ground to cover until then and it will take time and effort.

They say in my world that it takes six months for word of your good work to make the rounds, but do one bad thing and everyone knows about it immediately. Now Michelle and her team are reaping the terrible harvest of too much, too fast, too unwisely. Sometime not too far from here, if Michelle and her team find a nutmeg of common sense, they will do two things. First, they will offer a heartfelt, sincere apology in an attempt to not only mend fences, but build bonds with the LPGA – the place Michelle should embrace and call home.  Next, they should table playing with the men unless and until Michelle dominates the women’s game.

Until those steps are taken, Wie may never recover because the microscope now looks too close – highlighting and dissecting even the slightest blemish or misstep. Right now, all the good will manufactured in a media-created and fueled feel-good kid story has turned into an ugly feeding frenzy. Hell hath no fury like a journalist scorned. They are cleaning their claws, exacting a terrible revenge not for the sin of failing to live up to expectations, but for duplicitous answers and abusing privileges.
I can’t believe I am about to type the following words, but for the first time ever I am going to defend Michelle on the basis of her age. She’s only seventeen and I think we need to cut a little slack here and target the team and parents every bit as much as the child. Yes, Michelle gives unrealistic answers at interviews. Yes, Michelle seems to lack the gratefulness and graces of the rank and file LPGA player. Yes, Michelle may have been set up to fail. But now I feel bad for her because her fairy tale life lies in wreckage at her feet. The good thing is she’ll finally have to learn to grind and win instead of getting special favors, but the stinging, searing criticism that has come now would hurt even a seasoned veteran. Think of what it does to a seventeen year old girl. I know I would have cracked.
Here’s Beth Ann Baldry and Dottie Pepper, two female writers who say that there needs to be an intervention here. They are dead right, but my goodness is the backlash cutting sharply and deeply.

How did we get here? It was just a year ago that she was still the face of women’s golf and touted ridiculously as one of the 100 most important people who shape our world. I’ll tell you how – it’s a witches brew of a recipe that is almost always more bangs and flashes and gibberish magic words of marketing than any substantive success.

1. First, the media tried to shove down our throats an overly sugary media-created hype. It’s bad enough that a little girl’s dreams were corrupted for a politically charged agenda (What do we want? Women as good as men on a golf course!! When do we want it? NOW!!), but this time it was piggy-backed onto a story about a little girl athlete.

It sure looked good on paper to the warrior politicos. Attack a perceived, stereotyped bastion of male privilege (golf) and force a gender and race issue to the forefront. In the bargain, assist in growing the legend of a child prodigy. Who doesn’t like stories of little kids succeeding against adults? If anyone fails to walk in lockstep, just brand them sexist or masogynistic. They will like this story or else.

Here’s the mistake: mainstream America only tolerates these stories, wisely waiting to see if all the hype is true. The media and TV executives consistently underestimate middle America and have been able to get away with not paying attention to what they truly like because there was never an interface for the public to speak back. The Internet and blogs have changed all that. Now, the temperature of the general populus cannot be ignored.

The Michelle Wie story is a perfect example, but it has its origins elsewhere in other child prodigies such as Danny Almonte, Freddy Adu, Jennifer Capriati and a galaxy of actresses like the Bimbo Summit (that’s Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears for those of you scoring at home). People ate the Danny Almonte story up the year he was the talk of the Little League World Series. Here was a “Baby Pedro” – twelve years old and throwing 85 MPH fast balls and striking out whole teams.

The only problem was it was a lie. He was fourteen, not twelve. That’s why he dominated – he had an unfair advantage.

Cut to Freddy Adu – the kid who would make America finally love soccer. He’s currently in the “where are they now file.” Finally, we all know what happened to Jennifer Caprioti. Like Wie, I said don’t believe they hype and it was too much too fast. Everybody said I was a party pooper until she was found in a sleazy motel with drugs looking like she’d just done meth. I couldn’t stand Caprioti the punk, but I loved Caprioti the Comeback. She was sincere. She was humble. She was grateful.

Why? Time.

Precious, precious few 17 year olds can properly make the life decisions of a professional athlete. Handling millions? Building a wise, long term-looking team? Understanding how to deal with the press and be a genuine, unspoiled human being? How many of you can truthfully say you were equipped to handle that? I graduated from Deerfield Academy at seventeen and even I would have been a babe in the woods.
2. Michelle believed her press clippings. This thing got completely out of control. She had only won an obscure tournament yet on the basis of that and potential, she surpassed every woman player in history financially without even firing a winning golf shot. Free money never rewards hard work and sincere handling of responsibility. New money is fraught with peril. More than that, the press still hurtled out of control and her team began to follow suit.

3. Playing all tours while being obligated to none offended golf’s innate sense of meritocracy. When you pervert golf, golfers respond with a backlash. Golf is not low brow or lowest common denominator or “Gen X” no matter how much ESPN tries to push otherwise. “I rooted against her because she was getting things for free and I felt it was unfair” said Terry in Albany. “She makes we want to puke” said Julie in Minnesota who went on to explain how she didn’t like Michelle’s attitude at press conferences and seemingly never-ending string of missed cuts and withdrawals.

4. It was never about golf, it was about $$ and politics. When the results didn’t come, she still kept getting favors and arrogantly pushing her luck and her welcome.

Nevertheless, now I finally feel bad for Michelle. Yes, I spent all this time saying I thought she was never going to live up to the hype and that manufactured stories such as this are bad for golf. Yes, I was sharply critical, pointing out the many misdeeds I perceived. Yes, I am saying I told you so, but I’m doing so because I want us to be wiser next time. Running to the next hot issue is bad for the sport and bad for the player. Look at all the media created failures of late: Keyshawn Johnson, Terrell Owens, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. WHy do we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

I know a terrible old adage in the media and publishing world – “If heroes do not exist it is necessary to invent them.” Ask yourself next time – “What are they trying to sell me?” Let the sport give us the hero.

In the meantime, lets call off the dogs. A seventeen year old who wasn’t ready for fame, fortune and social responsibility certainly is not ready for public humiliation, seeing everything she built lying in ruins at her feet and bigger burden than ever before. Journalists who are ripping her need to also deliver mea culpas to us for over-doing it in the first place because they are in part to blame. Michelle broke hard and jagged, but the true test of greatness is this – all people face difficult times and decisions: it is how they handle themselves at those times that they are judged.

Maybe all this is the best thing for Michelle. She no longer needs to be “the savior” of women’s golf. She will now be looking for redemption and all Americans are sympathetic to that. But she also needs to remember that America and especially Golfing America like their heroes humble, human and grateful. Preening stars in high priced outfits may appeal to TV executives and newsmen seeking “casual eyeballs,” but such a marginal demographic is itself the point of diminishing returns.

Too late, wie’ve made our point – that this story was too good to be true. Too late, we have a confused, angst-filled and somewhat spoiled child struggling to adapt to the things she should have done all along. Too late, wie’ve had enough, wie realized wie’ve been had and wie’ve moved back to sanity and meritocracy in the game.

Now lets ease off the throttle. Piling on more attacks now – without further missteps from Team Wie – will be counter-productive. Let’s spend our time asking why this happened and figure out how to make sure we don’t make the same mistake over again. I already see it happening though as people flock to Alexis Thompson. We just can’t resist the kid angle, can we? Don’t we realize that if there’s two things people can’t stand it’s a dirty old man and a clean little boy?
Let’s see if Michelle got the message. Let’s see if for once she can give an interview without trying to feed us nonsensical talking points that fly in the face of logic (“it didn’t feel like I shot 78” needs to stop now.) Let’s see if she can earn that money she got by showing the maturity and responsibility were we ordered to see in her, but that never materialized – especially under pressure.

Even seventeen year olds can show remarkable maturity. A step in the right direction is a candid, introspective reassessment of her past dealings with the tours, press and colleagues and a sensible plan for her future career as a professional golfer, but one filled with earning her accolades and privileges, not flaunting them and milking them simoniacly.

Honor, wisdom, fortitude and temperance are the virtues needed for this job. Let them spawn humility, gratefulness, sincerity and comradery. Otherwise the press clippings will only get worse.