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As natural as it is for a 16-year-old schoolgirl to dream big dreams, it's just as unnatural to have those dreams spread around the world within minutes of being uttered.
Such is the life that Michelle Wie and her parents have chosen, however, that a dream that otherwise would be told to the bathroom mirror, or to a best friend in the cafeteria, instead goes out on the wires.
The other day at another men's golf tournament, this one in Switzerland, Wie told reporters, "Hopefully, I will be able to play the Ryder Cup one day. That would be awesome, and I think it is totally possible."
Michelle Wie is lucky she is 16, and equally fortunate that most in the media still are giving her a very appropriate free pass. Had 35-year-old Annika Sorenstam, the best woman player in the world and a golfer more polished than Wie is today, made such a straight-faced pronouncement, the cacophony of guffaws would have been audible from here to the K Club.
In Wie, we have a young lady who has never won on the LPGA tour -- has never even made the cut on the PGA Tour -- saying she thinks it is "totally possible" to make the 12-man (or is that person?) U.S. team for the most prestigious international event in golf.
When you're 16, anything is possible, of course. And who knows? Perhaps in Wie's golf lifetime, women will be added to the Ryder Cup roster. Or, equally as unlikely, she will become so much better than she is now that not only will she make cuts on the PGA Tour, she will win Tour events and eventually become one of the top players in the world, beating most of the men.
For now, though, one cannot help but think that the whimsical art of daydreaming is one part of Michelle Wie's childhood that she should not have made public when she turned pro and signed endorsement contracts worth $10 million last fall. Wouldn't it have been better if Michelle had simply shared the hope of someday playing in the Ryder Cup with her parents in their living room so the dream could come and go and not become a headline to be read, remembered and even archived?
It serves no purpose, really, for a kid to be making public pronouncements, even in the simple act of answering a question at a news conference, other than to lay the groundwork for years of pressure.
Opponents present and future do not have to worry about putting the psychological screws to Michelle Wie. Because she has stepped off the sidewalk and joined the parade so young, the pressure is already there, most of it self-induced. With her immense talent, she should be able to handle it. But there also is an undercurrent of grumpy dissatisfaction among some of her rivals in golf, and that's not going away anytime soon.
At the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic in July, Michelle shot a 77 in the first round and quit because of heat exhaustion in the second. But father B.J. Wie also had his mind on something else, according to Golf World.
"Some of the criticisms of Michelle's playing on the PGA Tour are very logically thought out," B.J. Wie said. "However, they do not fully understand the capitalistic market mechanism. Did you see the large galleries following Michelle yesterday despite her first-round score of 77?"
So Dad is into the marketing of his only child. That's hardly a surprise. He isn't the first father to be so inclined, and he won't be the last, but he certainly is the one we'll hear from the most in the next few years.
Thankfully, golf has other voices. Amy Alcott, a member of the LPGA Hall of Fame, can relate to what Michelle Wie is putting herself through. In a far calmer media era -- and, correspondingly, a far less lucrative financial era -- Alcott turned pro at 18 and won for the first time in only her third LPGA tournament, on her 19th birthday in 1975.
"I think she's an amazing talent," Alcott said Wednesday. "At her age, I was still playing amateur golf and playing with men from the back tees at Riviera to sharpen my game. The thing about Michelle competing against men, I think people get a big kick out of that. I don't spite her for doing that, not at all. I'd love to see her be successful because she has a lot of talent.
"But I'd also like to see her be pleasantly surprised as these things happen in her career," Alcott continued. "I've always believed in letting the snowball gather pace. Instead of saying what you want, just let it happen. Let wonderful things happen so it's not so up-front and not so businesslike. When you're so goal-oriented, it's more about expectations. But it can't just be about goals, about making money. There have to be elements of joy in this."
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