Posted on 11/16/2009 9:17:31 AM PST by Zuben Elgenubi
Breakthrough comes at LPGA's Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico
The Michelle Wie era has, at long last, begun. After years of injury and controversy, too much hype and money and not enough birdies, Wie won her first pro tournament Sunday afternoon at the LPGA's Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Typical of Wie's highly melodramatic career, the win didn't come easily, as she survived a final round dogfight with a half-dozen of the game's biggest names, ultimately making five straight nerve-jangling pars and then a gorgeous birdie on the final hole to close out a two-stroke victory over Paula Creamer.
Along the way Wie displayed both her awesome talent and her enduring star power, reminding everyone what all the fuss was about in the first place. It was a deeply personal triumph, capping a period of tremendous maturation on and off the golf course.
Having spent her teens bouncing between tours and continents, Wie, 20, had finally found some stability this season as a full-fledged LPGA rookie. Even before her victory at the penultimate tournament of the year, it had been a successful campaign defined by solid results, new friendships and a starring role at the Solheim Cup, during which Wie was overcome by a fist-pumping passion that was utterly foreign for a player who has always worn an icy game face.
The only thing missing was an individual victory, a familiar story for a player who, until Sunday, had not won a tournament of any kind since the 2003 U.S. Publinks Amateur, when she was a 13-year-old with an impossibly perfect swing and an endless future. Back then no one could have imagined another victory would be such a long time coming. But Wie used the many blown chances and missed opportunities as a journey of self-discovery, and along the way the giggly, goofy tween phenom grew into a self-possessed young woman.
A few weeks before leaving for Mexico a reflective Wie told me in an exclusive interview, "I feel like I have talent. I know how to play this game. There's just one last huge hurdle to overcome. I've been trying my best to figure it out and I think what it comes down to is I needed to believe in myself a little more. So now when I play I'm putting myself out there more and really putting myself on the line. The stakes are higher for me but I'm okay with that. I'm so focused on winning and to get that victory I have to give it everything I have. There's no holding back anymore."
The exhilaration of having finally come through was apparent on Sunday when Wie did a charmingly dorky dance on the final green of the Guadalajara Country Club. As much she will treasure this victory, it means even more to her sport. It is poetic that Wie's breakthrough came at Ochoa's tournament; during the awards ceremony on Sunday the reigning world No. 1 simultaneously presented Wie with the trophy and passed the torch. Wie's conquest will resonate from Guadalajara to her native Honolulu to Madison Avenue and all the way to LPGA headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla., where officials have spent this year furiously trying to keep the tour afloat as their niche sport has lost corporate support during the current economic downturn.
Wie's victory is all the more notable because it came in her first tournament in a month and a half as she has been devoting her focus to pursuing her communications degree at Stanford, where she in her third year. Wie is a full-time student during the fall and winter quarters, from late September to mid-March, and then takes an annual leave of absence as the LPGA schedule heats up. She has a 3.4 GPA and can often be found chilling in her dorm room with a large, eclectic group of friends.
Wie has thrived at Stanford among other high achievers because it has allowed her to "be a normal kid with a normal life," she says. Getting settled in on the LPGA was a little tougher because Wie had never embraced the tour while she spent years dabbling in competition against men (with mostly disastrous results.) By the end of 2008, after two years of substandard play due to a series of wrist injuries, the tournament invitations that once seemed like an entitlement were no longer forthcoming. So Wie swallowed her pride and went through the LPGA's qualifying tournament to secure her playing privileges. "I gained a lot of respect for myself by going through Q School," Wie says.
Her explosive play throughout the season — first on tour in birdie average (4.16 per round), sixth in driving distance (268.1 yards) — earned her a captain's pick to the Solheim Cup in late August, and it was a week that forever changed the trajectory of her career. Buoyed by a putting lesson from Champions tour oracle Dave Stockton, who convinced Wie to employ more feel and stop stressing about her mechanics, she summoned spectacular golf and a flag-waving fervor en route to going 3-0-1 and leading the U.S. to victory.
Having discovered the missing ingredient in her game — passion — it was inevitable she would break through. A month after the Solheim Cup, Wie finished second in the Navistar LPGA Classic despite being hobbled by a badly sprained ankle. It was her second runner-up finish of the year and sixth of her career, but this one felt different — on Twitter, Wie's friend and fellow player Paige MacKenzie hailed her limp as "gangsta swagger."
She brought that confidence to Guadalajara, and years of practice and preparation and want and desire were distilled into four nearly flawless rounds of golf. Golf, as we know it, will never be the same.
That must be photoshopped?
And the Paula Creamer pics were good to look at too..
But a few Cristie Kerr phots would work too....
Interesting. I’ll check that site out. I have a 20 year old daughter myself and I’m bemused by the hostility toward Wie. In my opinion, at the age of 20 you’re still a child. I know I was and I knew it even then.
That may be true, however they’ve been hyping this girl since she was what? 16 or 17... Lord knows I knew her name years ago and I don’t even follow golf. Press falling all over themselves hyping her.
Now she’s finally won one, good for her, but at 1 win there is no reason to start the rediculous hyping all over again. Let the woman play, if she winds up being fantastic so be it, but I hate seeing all this stupid hype machine going full tilt again after 1 win.
Its just flat out silly
Yeah, I know about being busy, my FRiend!!! I could have thrown something up yesterday but didn’t think of it.
I put threads up for the majors and the FedEx Cup events but no one really was posting anything. Not even the Payne Stewart tribute got 30 posts either.....
Glad all is well......
Probably would have came a while back if she had been allowed to build a winning amateur record,but hey, she’s a millionaire.
I agree. I haven’t watched golf in months because the announcing has been so dreadful. I’m glad to hear Pepper’s leaving. I’d like to see Zinger and Faldo together again. Maybe with Strange.
Yeah, for tthe most part the announcing in golf is not very good. The best announcers(maybe we can turn this into a thread)by far are Renton Laidlaw/Julian Tutt/Warren Humphries and Ken Brown, they guys who call the European Tour on GC.
Next, although you only see them exactly once a year at the Brirish Open, Mike Trico/Paul Azinger. I like Curtis but he sometimes comes through as being a little dry and stale, which leads to the exact opposite of Curtis, that would be Johnny Miller with Dan Hicks. Of course I know most golfers can’t stand the critisism, but if it came from Dan’s mouth I could understand it. At least JM has the street cred and tourney wins to back it up...
Now the worst, and this isn’t really close is CBS. Look, Jim Nantz is the unofficial voice of golf and he seems like a great ambassador for the game, but I think he’s been around long enough and to make matters worse is the constant cheering for Tiger. They do it blatenly and at times it’s really irritating. And the problem is the good guys, like Faldo, McCord, Feherty and Finchie have to join in it.....
The perfect scenario is that Mike Tirico goes to CBS with Zinger and the 3 man booth with Faldo is reunited. Any time Nick and Paul are together is very entertaining indeed......
LMAO!!!
A couple were. Some earned in a park tennis league, some earned during collegiate chess competition. None in professional sports.
(Sound of grey_whiskers purring.)
Cheers!
Eleven of the thirty-five players listed are Korean, not bad for a country that didn’t have a building standing less than sixty years ago.
Ping ping.
Hey, you exceeded bandwidth and knocked the blue balls off my profile page! Another trophy for you! LOL.
I’m so sorry ... I was not seeking a ‘trophy’. I regret that my posting that gif exceeded the bandwidth/your bandwidth(?).
Oh, wait. Here's another source that will suffice until I find the greater resolution:
November 20 -- Michelle Wie’s withdrawal from the LPGA Tour Championship due to injury was surely a disappointment for the rookie who finally won her first tour title last week.
“This tournament, and the [fan support] in Houston, meant a lot to me and I wanted to do everything I could to fight through the injury,” Wie said in a statement. “It bothered me last week in Mexico, but I was able to play through the pain. I realized today that I wouldn’t be able to continue to play through it.
Wie made the wise move and decided to go home to see her doctors and “follow their advice for treatment.”
Wie’s sprained ankle has to be even more of a downer for the LPGA and Golf Channel, both of which are counting on the 20-year-old power hitter to attract viewers and fans to the women’s professional golf tour.
Ratings winner. For sure, the LPGA and Golf Channel are at the top of the list of Wie’s many worldwide fans who are rooting for a quick recovery. Make no mistake: Michelle Wie is ratings gold for a golf organization that desperately needs to boost spectator interest and that has a new long-term contract with the golf network starting next year.
The Golf Channel has solid numbers to prove the value of having Wie in the field on any given Sunday. It may not look like a huge deal, but Wie’s first win at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational earned Golf Channel a 0.72 final-round rating, according to the network.
That figure represents one of the most-watched LPGA rounds this season, second only to the third day of the 2009 Solheim Cup. And, of course, Wie dominated Solheim Cup highlight reels when she went undefeated in her debut as a U.S. team member.
The recent rating also represented a 60-percent increase over last year’s Ochoa Invitational and was double the “typical” ratings for an LPGA final round on Golf Channel this year.
Huge draw. Just how big a draw is Wie? She pulled in an eye-popping $22,000 from one Texan who bid for the right to play with the first-time LPGA winner during the LPGA Tour Championship Pro-Am event, according to GolfChannel.com’s Randall Mell.
Michael Maggi, the winner of the bid to play with Wie -- technically the right to be the first to choose a pairing partner -- believed he would have to write a hefty check. But the winning proffer was big, even for Texas.
“I was thinking maybe $50,” Wie jokingly told Mell after she watched the bidding mania.
Good cause. Maggi’s dough paid for his entire foursome and benefited the Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital’s orthopedic services division. LPGA pro Stacy Lewis underwent spine surgery for scoliosis at the Hermann Hospital, Mell noted.
Wie may be out of the running this week, but there’s still plenty of drama at the LPGA Tour Championship as Lorena Ochoa and Jiyai Shin duke it out for player-of-the-year honors. Read about it at Wie withdraws, Ochoa leads at LPGA Tour Championship.
Another note: When Michelle was interviewed by Korean Television, she gave the interview in fluent Korean. When interviewing Japanese TV, she partially spoke in Japanese (the subject she is studying at Stanford).
She celebrated by twerking? I guess I was right after all.
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