No Longer A Teen Idle
Wie Is Back, With Injuries Behind and, She Hopes, Wins Ahead

By Leonard Shapiro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008

EDINA, Minn., June 25 -- As Michelle Wie prepared to play her final early-morning practice round for Thursday's start of the U.S. Women's Open, first-tee announcer Mary Mayer decided to have a little fun with her introduction of the Stanford University sophomore and 187th-ranked female golfer in the world.

"On the tee -- oh what is that girl's name? -- oh yes, Michelle Wie," Mayer said, laughing all the way.

Wie looked back at her and smiled, a facial expression not often seen a year ago when her 2007 season disintegrated in midsummer after injuries to both wrists led to soaring scores, missed cuts and withdrawals. Her woeful performance also bred considerable criticism, controversy and even speculation that she and the people around her had put her once bright golfing future in jeopardy by having her play in pain.

Wie had been talented enough to win the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links title at 13, three years after she became the youngest ever to qualify for the tournament. Over the last five years, she's had seven top 10 finishes in major championships, four as an amateur, and she turned professional in 2005, six days before her 16th birthday.

As a high school junior in 2006, she had top five finishes in three of the majors, missing out in a playoff by a shot at the Kraft Nabisco. She also was attracting attention from big-time sponsors, including Nike and Sony, and reportedly had signed a number of deals said to be in the $25 million range.

And then came the nightmare of 2007.

"Last year was, 'Oh God, don't let this hurt, come on, just let me swing the golf club, just let me finish 18 holes today,' " Wie, 18, said during a 30-minute news conference Tuesday, offering her first extended comments on her struggles in dealing with the first significant injury of her career and recent efforts to regain her once breathtaking golf game.

Asked what she might have done differently after her initial wrist injury in January, she said: "To put it simply, I would not have played. I was in no condition to play. I don't know what I was thinking. It was because I thought that at any moment it would get better. My [left] wrist was broken, but my mind wasn't broken. I wasn't going to let the wrist break me. It was just that mentality where it's like, 'I can fight through this, I can do this.' "

Some have blamed her Korean-born parents for pushing her to continue playing. B.J. Wie is a former college professor, and his wife, Bo, once sold real estate in Hawaii, where Michelle was born, to help pay the golf bills their precocious only child was accumulating as the finest female junior player in the country. Many also wondered why she was encouraged to keep playing in men's events, when she still never had won on the LPGA Tour.

"I really think her parents have not listened to advice they were given by a lot of people," LPGA Tour veteran Kris Tschetter said. "I think they've not done a very good job educating her as to what needs to be done to become a successful player out here. They've been told, but they have their own opinions. The players want Michelle to come back. She's exciting to watch, a great draw, and that can only be good for the tour."

Wie insisted that it was entirely her own decision to keep playing, that her coach, David Leadbetter, and her parents wanted her to stop, that it had nothing to do with sponsors putting pressure on her to perform to justify the millions they were investing in her.

"It was internal pressure," she said. "I wasn't going to back down for nothing. I guess I just believed in myself that I could really go through this. I was like, 'Okay, I'll just take more painkillers and just play through it.' "

Though Wie said she remains "fuzzy" on all the details of her injury, she finally did take about six weeks off from golf, at about the same time she also began her freshman year at Stanford. She lived in a dormitory on campus, got mostly A's and B's and said she had a fabulous experience and plans to return for her sophomore year this fall. She regained most of her health and is now "definitely on the road to recovery.

"I'm working on making it stronger, and it's really good," she said. "I don't really feel a lot of pain. . . . Actually, I'm really surprised at how good it is and I'm really pleased about it. If I hit it in the rough a lot and I hit a bad shot, I get a little twinge. But I just work it out a bit and it gets right back better a couple of hours later. It's pretty good."

That also would describe the state of her golf game, still what she described as "a work in progress" while at the same time insisting "I think I can win" this weekend at Interlachen Country Club, a classic 6,700-yard Donald Ross course -- the longest in U.S. Women's Open history -- in the Minneapolis suburbs.

Over the first nine holes of her final practice round Wednesday, Wie was in the rough off the tee on four holes, but also hit a booming 290-yard drive down the middle at the 438-yard fifth hole, the only time she took out her driver on the front side. Her long, flowing swing looked very much like the pre-2007 version, though she seemed slightly erratic with her long-iron play, sniping three straight shots dead right at the 178-yard No. 4.

Leadbetter said that he believes his 6-foot star pupil is on her way to regaining her old form and that he's been particularly encouraged by her recent play. That would include a sixth-place finish in a European women's event in Germany four weeks ago, second in a 36-hole Open qualifier two weeks ago at Woodmont and Manor in the Maryland suburbs and a 24th-place tie last week in the Wegmans LPGA event in Pittsford, N.Y., where she shot 69 in the final round.

"She's playing much better, making real strides," Leadbetter said. "It's obviously been a long haul back, and if anything, this may be a week or two early in the scheme of things to think about" winning this weekend.

Wie is still not a member of the LPGA Tour and is allowed to play only six tour events, not including majors, on sponsor's exemptions. She said she has no plans to go to qualifying school next fall because it conflicts with her Stanford classes, but will try to earn enough money in her remaining events to get into the top 80 on the LPGA Tour's money list. That would allow her to be fully exempt for the 2009 season. Last year, No. 80 on the list, Young Jo, earned $117,000; Wie has just more than $21,000 in prize money this season.

"I think I've come here with the mentality that I can play good enough to win this week," Wie said. "I'm feeling pretty confident about my game. I'm feeling like my tee shots are a lot better, I'm putting a lot better . . . everything is a lot better.

"I feel like I'm reemerging as a new player, a new person. I'm never, ever going to think about last year again. That was then and this is now. From now on, I'm only going to think about right now. I want to be as good a player as I can. I want to see how good I can get, how hard I can push, see how happy I can become and see what my full potential is."