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Michelle Wie turns pro before sixteenth birthday

By DAMON HACK
The New York Times

Oct. 5 -- Michelle Wie is often the tallest person on the driving range, and her golf swing wields a similar authority. Club arcs back, club sweeps ball, ball disappears into the horizon. The blur of movement lasts all of two seconds, but people watch her swing for hours.

Michelle Wie watches her tee shot on No. 9 during the qualifying round for the men's U.S. Open in Kahuku, Hawaii, on May 13. S(AP Photo/Ronen Zilberman)

"Just turn back the clock nine years," Dottie Pepper, the former L.P.G.A. star, said by telephone last week. "It was the same thing with Tiger."

As with Tiger Woods, Wie's expected announcement to turn professional today in Honolulu will be a seminal moment in golf. But it will also be a moment that some say has come too soon, even for a teenager who can smack a golf ball 300 yards.

In six days, Wie will turn 16. In eight days, she will make a highly visible and permanent leap in her professional debut at the Samsung World Championship, the L.P.G.A. event in Palm Desert, Calif.

But until she turns 18, Wie cannot become a member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, and she will be limited to six annual sponsor's exemptions into L.P.G.A. Tour events, though she can also compete in the United States Women's Open and the Women's British Open. She may also continue to accept exemptions into men's events and earn tournament checks.

Woods had a bundle of endorsement cash waiting when he turned pro at age 20, and so will Wie - by some estimates, $10 million. As with Woods, a large portion of the money will come from Nike, which barely had a foot in golf a decade ago but will now have on its payroll two of the most recognizable athletes in the game.

Companies see the world in the 6-foot Wie. Born in Honolulu of Korean descent, she is fluent in English and Korean and has studied Japanese and Chinese. She plans to continue classes at Punahou Academy, a private high school in Honolulu where she is a junior.

She can also pursue a lucrative endorsement career.

"Think of the relevant products for someone 15," said Scott Seymour, the senior vice president of Octagon, a marketing company. "It's consumer electronics. It's music. Think about when she turns 16 and first starts to drive. What associations with cars will she have when she gets her first driver's license? It's pretty funny to even talk about it."

Few doubt Wie's marketing potential, but whether she merges endorsement dollars with championship trophies depends on her performance inside the ropes, where she will compete against adults trying to earn their daily bread.

The L.P.G.A., like any sports league, is a club. Other members may be envious of Wie's endorsement portfolio, given her relatively thin résumé as an amateur..

As the next big thing - as Woods was as a rookie in 1996 and as Amy Alcott was when she qualified for the L.P.G.A. Tour as an 18-year-old in 1975 - Wie may also face whispers that she has plunged into deep waters too soon.

"Will there be jealousy of Michelle Wie? Certainly, there will be," Alcott said Monday in a telephone interview. "There was when I won so quickly, and I didn't have a $10- or $12-million endorsement contract."

Alcott, a Hall of Famer, said she remembered winning her first pro tournament in her third start and hearing another player saying as she walked past, "Oh, that's a fluke."

"I was very sensitive," Alcott said. "Sometimes I'd get my feelings hurt because I felt like an outcast. I was traveling alone. I didn't really have anyone to hang out with. I was a golfing machine. I'd play, I'd eat, I'd go back to a private house."

Wie's ascendancy comes after a summer in which teenagers were a story line in the L.P.G.A.: the amateurs Wie, Brittany Lang and Morgan Pressel and the professional Paula Creamer contended at the United States Women's Open in June before falling short in the final round.

Ernie Els and Tom Lehman, among others, have praised Wie's talent and demeanor, but blending in with adults is not always easy. Wie and Pressel, for example, have had to learn on-course etiquette. (Each was reprimanded by a playing partner during a United States Women's Open for standing in line with the hole on the green).

While players occasionally dine together at tournaments, Wie often sits with her mother, Bo, a real estate agent, and father, B. J., a professor of transportation management at the University of Hawaii.

"She seems very quiet, and I've always thought she was a nice girl," Emilee Klein, 31, a three-time L.P.G.A. winner, said of Wie in a telephone interview last week. "I don't think anyone really knows her. I don't think I've ever seen her use her locker in the locker room once. She's usually with her family. She's 15. It's not like a 35-year-old is going to become her best friend. The good thing is, she has her parents. She has someone to do things with all the time."

Pepper, 40, said she once had lunch with Wie and worked out with her once as well. "I just don't think a lot of people know her very well because she's so insulated by her parents," said Pepper, who turned pro at 22 in 1988. "I'm not sure that if I had a 15-year-old, I wouldn't be doing it exactly the same way. Nobody knows the best way to do this."

B. J. Wie has often said he wants his daughter's life to be varied and fulfilling, and Wie's goals reflect that. As Woods grew up with pictures of Jack Nicklaus on his bedroom walls, Wie had posters of Woods on hers.

Her amateur career has been nontraditional. She competed five times against men - and will do so again next month at the Casio World Open in Japan. Wie, who longs to play in the Masters, has come close to making the cut against men, by one shot at the 2004 Sony Open and by two shots at this year's John Deere Classic.

Compared with her immediate peers, Wie has been found wanting in her amateur career. Pressel, 17, won the 2005 United States Women's Amateur and five consecutive American Junior Golf Association invitational tournaments. Creamer, now 19, won 11 A.J.G.A. tournaments and has won three events since turning pro last December.

Woods and Nicklaus dominated the amateur circuits before turning professional.

Other than the 2003 United States Women's Amateur Public Links Championship, Wie has several smaller tournament victories in Hawaii to her credit. Still, the perception of her as a golf daredevil - challenging men routinely, bombing drives down the fairway - has given her the glow of a superstar.

"There is a lot of hype around Michelle," Alcott said, "and you don't really know in the long run how it's going to pan out. On the bigger picture, we in the U.S. are so into hero and heroine worship that we need to create this hype before people step up and prove themselves. Michelle still has to go out and win."

When Wie was asked during the Women's British Open in July if she would have been better off focusing on competing and beating girls instead of trying to beat professionals in recent years, she said, "You can learn the art of winning out here, too, and that's what I'm trying to do."

Others aren't so sure it was the best preparation.

"I think you need to learn how to win," Klein said. "Michelle hasn't proven herself a winner at any level. You have to win on each level to get used to it. She has so much talent that she could win at any time, but in my mind, Morgan and Paula went about it the right way."

Pepper said: "At this point, she is an untapped talent because there is no track record. No qualifying school, no futures tour. There is a lot that has to be seen. I echo what a lot of people are saying. She is going to have to win to justify it.

"There are a lot of questions that need answers."

Story Produced by: Alan Festo

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