Michelle Wie is a 17-year-old high school student, who happens to play golf for money. In a golf tournament in Japan this week, she was the only female player of the 101 entrants and shot a score of 81 and a score of 80 in her two rounds. She was not invited to play the final two rounds, since she was 27 strokes behind the leader with 99 golfers ahead of her. It is likely that all of her expenses were paid and that she received appearance money paid by the sponsor. She did not qualify for the tournament, but was invited to play by the sponsor; and because of her failure to qualify to play the last two rounds, she will not receive a share of the prize money. She is scheduled to play in Hawaii against a field of men in the Sony Open in January, which is a PGA Tour tournament. Sony, one of her sponsors and the sponsor of the golf event, invited her and her entourage for a week in Hawaii.
She needs to practice.
I'm in favor of Michelle Wie playing against men. Here's the rub, however. She has not qualified to play in any of the "men's" tournaments in which she has played, but been given a starting spot in each tournament by the sponsor, in the hope that the money would roll in with all the publicity caused by the novelty of a woman playing in a "men's"event. She has not been competitive. There are plenty of other professional golfers who were more deserving of a spot in the field in those tournaments than Michelle Wie. In her previous two "men's" tournaments, she was dead last after two rounds and didn't make the cut for the final two rounds in each of those tournaments. Before that, she quit because it was too hot.
She should be required to earn a spot in any future PGA Tour events, by way of playing in a Monday qualifying round for the four spots in the tournament not guaranteed to anyone or by earning a PGA Tour card. Otherwise, she should try to play on the Nationwide Tour or satellite tournaments in the South against male competitors, if she can qualify there, or in exhibition matches against men.
And to do that, she needs to practice a whole lot more than she has lately and hike her game to a whole new level.
Posted by Bill at November 24, 2006 04:01 PMI'm waiting for the XBox Tiger Woods Golf Pro Tour myself.
Posted by: Elle at November 27, 2006 06:06 PMI always thought that golf was a strange game.
Posted by: Anji at November 28, 2006 05:53 AMI have always LOVED to watch and play golf. I don't play anymore, though. And I don't watch a whole lot of it anymore either and I'll tell you why. It's for the very reason that you're talking about. Ok, Tiger Woods is good, a true prodigy, but he doesn't have half the grace, elegance or competitiveness of say, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Sneed, ChiChi of the golfing legends. It does not matter what the man is doing in a tournament, he can be 9 strokes behind the leader and he is the only one the announcers talk and review. It irritates the daylights out of me! And he shows poor sportsmanship when he misses. I can't stand the anger and bubbling furor he displays at those moments. But the worse is when they completely ignore the leader to focus on Tiger. Have you noticed that? When did the game become the player? It's always supposed to have been about the precise moment in time. When club meets ball and the ball sails flawlessly across yards and yards of manicured heaven, arcing to a graceful lilt and dribbling to a stop in perfect lie and THEN the player that put it there.
Posted by: wlfldy at December 5, 2006 09:09 AMAmen! Michelle Wie drives me nuts. If she was a few strokes off at every tournament (sponsor invite, hmmmph!) I could understand her continued efforts to play with men, but she's always way off the pace. (Or can't take the heat and humidity.....) Once she starts beating up on the ladies, to the point that playing them isn't competitive for her anymore, THAN she should play against the men.
I'm the biggest fan of girlpower!, but this isn't a display of such, and I don't have any desire to watch a novelty. I want to watch the game.
Don't even get me started on how my son's hockey team has to play the girls' teams by THEIR no checking rules........even though he's got two girls on his "boys" team who have no problem checking and getting checked during their regular games........
Posted by: lucy at December 5, 2006 02:31 PM