The Sure Thing: The Making and Unmaking of Golf Phenom Michelle Wie - Hardcover

Adelson, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345511751 ISBN 13: 9780345511751

Verlag: Ballantine Books Inc., 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Describes the rise and fall of the teenage golf prodigy, from her early successes in professional tournaments to her failures by the age of eighteen, and discusses the possible reasons for her decline.

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Eric Adelson first interviewed Michelle Wie when she was 10 years old for a story in ESPN The Magazine. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s School of Journalism, he lives with his family in Orlando, Florida.

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Introduction 

The Next Tiger Woods Is . . . a Ten- Year- Old Girl?   In August 2000, I flew to Honolulu to report a story for ESPN The Magazine on the most popular sports figure in the Aloha State at the time, University of Hawaii head football coach June Jones. While I waited for Coach Jones in his office, the school’s sports information director, Lois Manin, started telling me about a local golfer who could drive a ball 300 yards.

 I confess I was only half listening. People pitch ideas to magazine writers all the time, and someone who hit big, booming drives didn’t sound like a rare find in golf- crazy Hawaii. 

But Manin persisted. 

“She’s 10 years old.” 

She? 

Ten years old? 

Manin scribbled a name on a blue Post- it note: B.J. Wie. She added a phone number. The girl’s name, Manin told me, was Michelle. 

I returned to my hotel in Waikiki and forgot about it. The next day, I opened my notebook and saw the Post- it. I was curious. So I called and left a message for Mr. Wie. He returned my call the following day. He had a soft, almost airy voice, and often punctuated his sentences with a laugh. 

“Michelle has a very normal childhood,” he said of his young daughter before I even thought to ask. He offered to put Michelle on the phone— again, before I even asked if she was home. I heard him place the receiver down on a table. Soon there was a light rustle. 

“Hello?” 

Her voice was high- pitched, barely audible. I introduced myself. I had not really prepared for this interview. Was I really going to write an article about an athlete who wasn’t even a teenager? 

“So you like golf?” (I had to start somewhere.) 

“Yes!” 

“Why’s that?” 

“It’s fun!” 

Fun? Fine, but I wanted to see if indeed this 10- year- old really did live a “normal” life. So I asked her what she liked besides golf. 

Michelle plunged into a long explanation about the differences between Digimon and Pokémon. 

“What else do you like?” 

Laura Ingalls Wilder—“the writer,” she explained— and Gelly Roll pens. She rattled off her favorite toys as if drawing up a list for Santa. She said she loved all kinds of animals, especially big, fluffy dogs. 

“But not amphibians!” 

(Noted.) 

“Who’s your favorite golfer?” 

“Tiger Woods.” x • Eric Adelson 

“Oh, yeah? Think you can beat him?” 

“Maybe in five years.” 

I smiled and listened for a laugh, any sign of a joke. 

Silence. 

She was serious. 

Two years earlier, ESPN had launched the first issue of its magazine with a cover featuring four athletes it crowned as “NEXT”—Alex Rodriguez, Kordell Stewart, Eric Lindros, and Kobe Bryant. All four would have big careers, ESPN The Magazine predicted, but they would also bring forth a revolution in their sports. Rodriguez was a rare gem at the time, a power- hitting middle infielder. Stewart was a double threat at quarterback who could throw and run. Lindros was a one- ofa- kind power forward: Gordie Howe with speed. And Bryant had stormed into the NBA without so much as a single college game on his résumé. 

Michelle Wie, at the time I first spoke with her, had the potential to break more molds than all four of those athletes. If she could hit a golf ball 300 yards at age 10, what would that mean for the game of golf down the road? What kind of force would she be in the game when she grew up to be, say, 18? 

Michelle Wie got a page to herself in ESPN The Magazine’s November 27, 2000, issue: 

Aloha! . . . When I was 5, I hit a drive 100 yards. I had to start playing on courses after that because my drives would always go into the neighbor’s yard. During the summer, I play 18 holes and then practice. I start at 9:30 a.m. and play until 8 p.m. In the winter, I wake up at 6:30, and my mom drives me to school at 7:45. I have math, science, Spanish, art, and PE. I like science the best. 

During recess, I play basketball with the boys. School ends at 2:45. I do my homework in the car. Then I play. My parents take me to Olomana Golf Course. I play 9 or 18 holes and then chip and putt. My mom carries my clubs. My dad watches. . . . I used to play with Travis and Chris. They’re 15- year- olds. But they avoid me now because I out- drive them. I usually hit the ball 230 yards. Sometimes 250. One time I hit it 300. I won every tournament against people my age, so I’ve been playing older kids. I like being better than them. On the weekends I watch golf on TV . . . the PGA Tour, not the LPGA. I like the players on the PGA Tour better. I want to play on the PGA Tour. 

My favorite golfer is Tiger Woods. I think I can beat him in the near future. 

Like when I’m 15. 

Over the next five years, Wie became a household name in Golf Nation. The youngest golfer to win the Hawaii Women’s State Amateur Stroke Play Championship. The youngest to win the Jennie K. Wilson Invitational, the state’s most prestigious ama - teur tournament for women. (When a local reporter sought her out for a quote afterward, he found her at a table, grinning, with remnants of an ice-cream sundae all over her face.) The youngest to qualify for a Ladies Professional Golf Association tournament, at 12. The youngest to win a USGA championship, at 13. The youngest to enter a PGA Tour event, at 14. 

At 15, she landed on the cover of Fortune magazine and as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman. At 16, Wie was named one of Time magazine’s “The Time 100, The People Who Shape Our World”—in the “Heroes and Pioneers” section no less, with the likes of former president Bill Clinton and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Clinton and Condoleezza Rice both went out of their way to play a round of golf with her. (The secretary of state fawned over her sparkling nail polish.) Wie handled all the fuss and bother with grace and aplomb. It was as though she expected all of this to happen. And then, as she got near the brink of realizing the prediction she made over the phone as a 10- year- old, everything changed.



“It’s Not That Difficult Being Me”

 The man never sat down on a golf course. Never. He stood like a sentry at all times, behind the tee or on the side of the fairway, with his binoculars in play, ready to flip open his notes on the greens, ready to let out a whoop if his daughter made a big putt. 

And yet on this Friday in May 2006, Michelle Wie’s father found a lush patch of grass on a steep hill overlooking the 13th green at the Sky 72 golf course just outside Seoul, and he sat down. He smiled as he took in the sight of his only daughter, Michelle, lining up a tricky left- to- right 15- foot putt for birdie. That was something rare for him, too— smiling before a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0345511751
• ISBN 13: 9780345511751
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 247
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar