Wiesy, You Best Be Joking With Me
Look, Deadspin doesn't cover much golf. So that means when I see a golf story hit Deadspin, it's either a major championship story or a golfer did something stupid. You want to guess which this is?
You got it! Michelle Wie is playing the PGA Tour...again! In Tahoe!
Fresh off a disqualification on the LPGA Tour, Michelle Wie has decided to tee it up against the men, again.Wie will play next week in the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open, the first time she'll play on the PGA Tour this year, tournament organizers said.
It will be her eighth time playing on the PGA Tour, and she has yet to make a cut. The only time Wie has made money playing against the men was on the Korean Tour, in 2006, at the SK Telcom Open.
C'mon! We need to stop with this gimmick. Wie isn't even signing scorecards and she's going to play against the PGA Tour's B list. Well, at least it is the B list.
Meanwhile, Michelle Wie has lost all sight of trying to get her LPGA Tour card and avoid Q-school. Then again, at Interlachen, she said she didn't think she was going to go to Q-school anyway.
10 comments:
Hey, man, I think she can make the cut. Seriously.
I don't doubt that she could make the cut if she plays well like she did in Springfield. The course is about 7500 yards, though. Yes, that is a bit of a misnomer, but that is awfully long.
My gripe, though, isn't with her ability to make a cut. It's with the management of her career. It is way more important right now for Wie to build confidence in her tournament game and maybe win a LPGA Tour event - at minimum get a card. Then she can worry about the next stage in making a PGA Tour cut.
But, if she can put it together, like I said, I think she can see the weekend.
Look, there's no LPGA event for her the next 2 weeks, thanks to her bad play this season. She needs to stay tuned up for the Canadian Open and she's not entered in this week's Futures Tour event, which means she's definitely not going that route to the LPGA, as she needs to play in 6 events to be eligible for a card. Dealing with the pressure of playing with the PGA's 2nd tier should be good preparation for the CO the following week. Sorenstam has indicated she learned about pressure and the game from playing at Colonial--why can't Wie do the same?
I would have been totally against this if Wie hadn't kicked Vicky Hurst's butt and outplayed some very very good LPGA players in those 3 rounds at Springfield (including 2 who broke the tournament record). In Germany, she still lost to Amy Yang, who's still made less than $35K on the LPGA (as opposed to the LET, where she's #3 on their order of merit). This past week, she was hanging shot for shot with major winner Ya Ni Tseng. She's playing as well as she ever has in her life, so why not go for it? She gets this week to prepare for 2 of the most meaningful tournaments of her career.
In a weird way, doing the PGA event might keep her from obsessing over the next 2 weeks about her LPGA hopes hanging on 1 tournament. After the CO, she'll know if she needs to go to Q-School or not. Then she can make some decisions about the direction her career should next take.
The PGA Tour pit stop is a fair argument. I've seen it floated in a couple of places, so it can't be without some solid merits. The downside to this really comes if she gets crushed this week. What if she finishes DFL? Then I would think that the momentum she had from State Farm gets seriously deflated. (Even with the DQ, I think she has a lot of positives to take away from the experience - just as you mentioned.)
No matter what, though, she has 1 event to make $90K. She has to finish top 3 in her next event. The CO is it. That's a lot of pressure, regardless of the pit stop before then - barring some kind of PGA Tour victory :) The positive of not getting her card in the CO, though, is learning to deal with the pressure of Q-school by needing a place finish and finding a way there.
Ryan,
Canada is the biggest purse of the year after The British Open till year end. I looked at last year's payouts, Wie can by with a top five.
Bill
Good point, Bill. CN jumped the purse to something like $2.7M, right? She has that going for her at least. Still, quite an assignment.
She played terrible at the Women's Open, indifferently at the Farr, and did just fine at the State Farm, so it's less mo' that I'm thinking of than experience under pressure. And when so few expect you to even make the cut, it's a lot easier to outperform expectations than live up to them, sometimes.
Good news for her on needing only a top 5 at the CO, but to be safe she'll need over $125K in season winnings, IMHO.... The top 80 are on a pace to make more than any year I've seen since Cavalleri made almost $124K in '04. #80's already over $100K and there are a lot of good golfers between #70 ($124K) and #120 ($51K) who could get on a roll. Safest thing for her to do is just go ahead and win the CO, if she can....
So, if you were going to be a bookie, what odds would you place on Wie finishing top 3 at the CWO? Are we expecting a solid CNO field, or one about the strength of the State Farm (which was still pretty good)?
I'd have to look at the CWO field, but let's put it this way: I picked Vicky Hurst as my long-shot non-member at the State Farm Classic in the Pakpicker at Seoul Sisters.com that week. Wie wasn't even in my top 30. So right now I'd give her better odds of making the cut against the men than getting a T6 or better against the women. That could change, of course, but that's what I'm thinking right now.
Hey, man, I think she can make the cut. Seriously.
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