Defending her putting stance is the only way for Michelle Wie to stay “relevant” after a career of failed expectations

 

The following is the closest that Michelle Wie gets to “relevance” these days, courtesy CNN:

The golfing world has rallied around Michelle Wie West following comments made by Donald Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani "objectifying" the five-time LPGA Tour winner. The former New York mayor appeared last Thursday on the “War Room” podcast hosted by Trump's ex-adviser Steve Bannon and was remembering a round of golf he played with Wie West and the late talk show host Rush Limbaugh at a charity event in 2014.

As he recalls it, Limbaugh was complaining about the "paparazzi" and blamed Giuliani, only for the former New York mayor to point out photographers were for the then Wie -- she married Jonnie West, director of basketball operations for the Golden State Warriors in 2019. On the green is Michelle Wie and she is getting ready to putt," Rudy Giuliani said on the podcast on Thursday. "Now Michelle Wie is gorgeous. She's six feet. And she has a strange putting stance. She bends all the way over. And her panties show. And the press was going crazy."

Giuliani went on to finish his story asking, "Is that OK to tell that joke, I'm not sure?" To which Bannon replied, "We already told it, so I don't know."

Wie West called Giuliani's story "highly inappropriate" and "unsettling."

"What this person should have remembered from that day was the fact that I shot 64 and beat every male golfer in the field leading our team to victory. I shudder thinking that he was smiling to my face and complimenting me on my game while objectifying me and referencing my 'panties' behind my back all day," said Wie West in a twitter post.

"What should be discussed is the elite skill level that women play at, not what we wear or look like. My putting stance six years ago was designed to improve my putting stats (I ended up winning the US Open that year), NOT as an invitation to look up my skirt! Nike makes skirts with SHORTS built in underneath for this exact reason ... so that women can feel CONFIDENT and COMFORTABLE playing a game that we love.

Whatever. Aside from the inappropriateness of Giuliani’s observations in this day and age, Wie is the last person who should be talking about having “elite” skill, or bragging about her 64, since the tee boxes for female players like herself were—like in all LPGA courses—placed 50 to 60 yards closer to the hole than for male players. An Oregon publication called The Bulletin complained that public golf courses are “brutally unfair” to female golfers. Why? “For the average female golfer, golf is ALWAYS unfair — at least at golf courses lacking proper forward tee boxes”; this means golf courses without the “cheats” designed to prevent female golfers from being too “self-conscious” about their level of play compared to male golfers.

I guess you can tell I don’t think too much of Michelle Wie, and there are very good reasons for that, and I am not the only commentator to think that Wie is little more than a joke. I’ve commented on Wie’s career a couple of times in the distant past, when she was still “relevant” as a news item, although not necessarily in a good way. Wie was a teen golfing “phenom” who towered over the other girls and even the boys, and could hit a golf ball to kingdom come, if you listened to the rave reviews. At 16 she could play with the “big boys” on the PGA tour, and she received several exemptions to play with them. She was too good for the LPGA, and it was expected that she would dominate the mere mortals on that tour, and she would soon have Tiger Woods looking over his shoulders at that marvel of nature taking away all his thunder. 60 Minutes had not one, but two segments showcasing her as the “next big thing” in the sports world.

You think I’m kidding? That sure is the way the media was promoting Wie, and to listen to her, she was all in with the hype. At 16, there was a book out there entitled Michelle Wie: The Making of a Champion; the next year, there was a 160-page primer on her “power swing technique.” Wie certainly demonstrated potential at a young age. She qualified for the “any age” U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship at the age of 10; this is not to be confused, of course, with the U.S. Amateur Championship. She won a couple of local Hawaii tournaments, and at 12 she qualified for one of the minor LPGA tournaments; at 13 she made the cut at an LPGA event. The next year she was given a sponsor’s exemption to play the Sony Open on the PGA tour, and she actually only missed the cut by one stroke. At 16 she played the Sony Open again, missing the cut despite shooting one round of 68. Nike jumped on her bandwagon, and Wie already commanded a $10 million endorsement deal—before she won even one professional tournament.

These were all admittedly remarkable achievements for someone her age—but mainly for just “being there.” Tiger Woods won the U.S. Amateur Championship at the age of 18, and his first PGA title at 20, and his first major championship at 21. Surely Wie could at the very least equal those achievements. But it was not to be. Five exemptions allowed her to play in obscure PGA events where only one or two of the top-50 players appeared in to make an easy buck, missing the cut each time. She played in three European and Japanese men’s tour event, again missing the cuts. She did make the cut in a rain-shortened South Korean event, although she was tied for last place when it was over. And we haven't even started talking about her "dominance" on the LPGA tour.

But it was all one big publicity “stunt.” Wie turned out to be one of the biggest frauds in sports history. Something had gone horribly wrong with this supposedly well-oiled machine, a rusted hulk at the bottom of the ocean. Upon turning professional, Wie’s first claim to fame was not all the tournaments she was winning, but the negative publicity she was generating for being disqualified for signing a wrong scorecard, or being caught cheating in ball placement. As the years and tournaments not won kept piling up, Wie complained of unexplained broken wrists and running through caddies to blame like water out of a faucet. She played some tournaments as a freelancer for a few years, taking her college school work with her, but bowed to reality and became a full-time LPGA tour member in 2009, the year she won her first event playing with the “big girls.” From 2012 to 2013 she played in 49 LPGA events and missed the cut 18 times, and had only five top-10 finishes.

In 2014 Wie “rebounded” for her only modestly successful season, winning two tournaments, including her first (and only) major title at the U.S. Women’s Open. But the numbers don’t lie: in 268 LPGA tour events before she announced her taking time off for family reasons in 2019, she made the cut in 204 events, and won five events in total—earning less money actually playing golf than she did in that first endorsement deal. Wie never finished higher than sixth in the rankings on the LPGA tour, and only twice in the top-10 in scoring average and on the money list.

At the time, Annika Sorenstam accused Wie of not having the “mental toughness” to be successful: "You would think that being on the scene for many years now that she would have succeeded a lot more. It just goes to show that it’s a lot more than a golf swing that matters and the mental aspect is a really important part of the game." Wie even admitted—or rather, whined about—as much in a Golf.com interview: “I might be burned out. I'm not a person who 24 hours a day can only think, live, eat and breathe golf. I'm not that kind of a person. If I did that, I might be fed up with it.”

After the 2006 John Deere Classic on the PGA tour, my observation about Wie’s performance somehow made it into the letters section of The Seattle Times sports page:

The scene of Michelle Wie being carted off on a stretcher for heat exhaustion after withdrawing from the John Deere Classic was merely the final embarrassment in a considerably less than awe-inspiring performance. Commentators had been hyperventilating over Wie's chances against the lower-tier and has-beens on the PGA tour, but once again she only proved that she doesn't have the ability, endurance or the will to successfully compete against the best players on the PGA tour. She has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to wilt under pressure. It is difficult to believe that she can ever hope to seriously compete on the PGA tour. If making the cut is her only realistic goal, she will remain what she is now: a publicity stunt and gimmick.

By 2019, Wie was barely surviving on the fumes of her endorsement deals, and other than the “hiccup” in 2014, she turned out not to be the female incarnation of Tiger Woods, but the poster child of failed expectations, if not the laughingstock of the sports world—which is her true legacy, not what some idiot like Rudy Giuliani says about her putting stance.