SUMMIT, N.J. – Michelle Wie has nothing left to prove on the golf course, and she may retire soon to pursue other career opportunities in arenas traditionally dominated by men. Ms. Wie made her announcement yesterday after another inspiring performance, this time at the Canoe Brook Country Club, where she dominated the galleries and the press coverage at a two-round qualifying event for the U.S. Men’s Open to be held June 15-18.
“Wie destined to make her mark in golf against men, not women,” said a headline on Sports Illustrated‘s website.
“And the glory of it all is that she is able to achieve immortality while keeping her string of inspiring failures intact,” wrote Shill Pheridan in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Although technically Ms. Wie failed to qualify for the U.S. Men’s Open, she emerged the clear moral victor once again by finishing in a fourteen-way tie for fifty-ninth in a field of 153 pros. As she has done so many times before, Ms. Wie snatched defeat from the jaws of victory—his time by bogeying three straight holes just when it seemed she was about to become the first woman to qualify for the U.S. Men’s Open.
As she often does, Ms. Wie, 16, made history just by trying to become the first woman to qualify for a men’s event, but she is obviously growing tired of making history so easily, and who could blame her? During the last fourteen months she has failed to qualify for The Masters; she has narrowly missed the cut in two PGA Tour events; and she has even demonstrated that anyone who says she ought to compete against women doesn’t know [golf] from Shinola.
In a remarkable come-from-ahead moral victory at the U.S. Women’s Open last year, Ms. Wie held a share of the lead before finishing tied with Annika Sorenstam for twenty-third. Nobody in the history of golf has won a moral victory by finishing lower than tenth.
The significance of accomplishments like these isn’t lost on the public.
“I don’t normally follow golf, but didn’t Tiger Woods need eight or nine years on the PGA tour before he missed two cuts?” asked Bitsy Phillips, 89, who had traveled from an assisted-
living facility for Alzheimer’s patients in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to see Ms. Wie in action. “This little girl accomplished that before her sixteenth birthday. To my mind she’s the best there ever was already.”
Phillips’ opinion is shared by Selena Roberts, a columnist who wrote in The New York Times last year, “Right now, Wie probably has no idea she is, like, freaking out everyone who is absolutely polarized by golf’s new Tiger-esque symbol of inclusion.”
According to Ms. Roberts, Ms. Wie is a cinch to rescue both affirmative action and the royal sport of golf, which has lost 200,000 participants and sixty-three courses during the last three years. Nevertheless, small-minded competitors claim that Ms. Wie’s participation in men’s events “delegitimizes” the LPGA, and even more vicious competitors point out that Ms. Wie’s next victory in any event—PGA or LPGA—will be her first.
Judging by her remarks yesterday, however, Ms. Wie may not stick around to provide her fans with the victories they have been predicting. Sounding jaded and impatient at once, the six-foot-tall Ms. Wie said she was considering applying for an exemption that would allow her to try out for a men’s basketball team.
“There are, like, so many awesome ways to make history,” giggled Ms. Wie, “and my financial advisors tell me there are, like, sponsors who are willing, you know, to pay me some serious money to try them.”
In other sporting news, the Duke University lacrosse team has been reinstated after twenty-seven members accused of language arts violations in their e-mail correspondence successfully completed counseling and passed a remedial English-usage test.
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