Swing and a Near Miss

HONOLULU —  She made about five miles of putts, but Michelle Wie didn’t quite travel where she really wanted to go Friday at Waialae Country Club. But for a precocious 14-year-old high school freshman, it was quite a journey.

Wie birdied two of the last three holes, shot a two-under-par 68, played even par for 36 holes and still wound up missing the cut by one shot at the PGA Tour’s Sony Open.

It was quite an adventure for Wie, an amateur and the first teenage girl to play in a PGA Tour event. What’s next? Well, after a couple of days off, it’s the start of a new semester at Pun- ahou School and a crack at the physical education class she is dreading because she hates to run.

For someone who doesn’t like to run, that was quite a charge Wie made at the history books.

Figuring that the cut would be at even par 140, she birdied the par-four 16th hole and the par-five 18th to fall tantalizingly short. Not until she reached the scorer’s trailer did Wie learn that the cut was at 139 and she hadn’t made it.

“I was told it was 139 and I added 72 and 68 together and it equaled 140,” she said. “I was like, ‘No, no this is not happening.’ I thought I made it after I made that putt.”

She didn’t. Seventy-nine players made the cut at one-under 139 (10 shots behind leader Steve Allan of Australia, who shot a 62 Friday), but Wie wasn’t one of them.

“I think I played very good today,” she said. “One more shot and I would have made it. That’s killing me right now.”

The results will say that Wie scored better than 48 male players, including John Cook, Scott Hoch, Steve Flesch, Adam Scott, Craig Stadler and Jeff Sluman. The results also will say Wie that tied for 80th while missing the cut. And yet it didn’t seem anything like such a mundane outcome. Perhaps that’s why when Wie rolled in a four-foot putt for birdie at the 18th, playing partner Craig Bowden raised his hands and began clapping to lead the applause.

Wie bogeyed the first hole and was at three over when she reached the par-three seventh hole, where she dropped in a 58-foot birdie putt that broke about five feet. At the 11th, Wie did it again, nailing a 52-foot putt for another birdie that vaulted her to one over.

She dropped a shot and fell back at the 13th after driving in the right rough, but Wie came back at the par-four 16th with a birdie putt from 17 feet. Her eagle chip came close at the 18th, but not close enough.

By one stroke, a single shot, Wie fell short of becoming the first woman to make a cut in a men’s pro event in 59 years, since Babe Didrikson made the 36-hole cut at the 1945 Los Angeles Open.

If there was one shot that she wanted back, it was her three-iron second shot at the par-five ninth when she missed the green to the right and could do no better than par.

Out on the course, her father, B.J., and her mother, Bo, followed the play and tried to stay calm. B.J. sipped water and watched his daughter from outside the ropes.

“Michelle for president!” one spectator said.

She isn’t yet running for office, but the fanfare was already in place.

Besides the fans, there was an entire convoy of media in tow, as well as added security, tournament officials and PGA Tour staff. The scene was reminiscent of the kind of following that Tiger Woods usually commands.

Wie seemed unaffected, unless you call the time she grinned and skipped down the fairway as getting uptight.

And as Wie’s performance stood as some level of proof that she was legitimate, there remain indications that not everyone is comfortable with where it all goes from here.

Stuart Appleby applauded Wie’s entry this week. Coupled with Annika Sorenstam’s appearance last year at Colonial as the top female player in the game and now Wie’s play here as a new beginning of the women’s tour, he said there’s nothing left for anyone else to try.

“I don’t think you can put anybody else [out] there and make anything out of it,” said Appleby, the Mercedes Championships winner last week.

“You can only tell a great story like Michelle’s once. If she plays great, there’s no point in inviting her back to more tournaments because she’s so young that she should really focus on being young and being herself and remembering these latter parts of her teens.”

However, Appleby said he wouldn’t be surprised if a sponsor of a PGA Tour event offered an exemption to Wie.

“Is it appropriate that it happens later this year? I don’t know. Then you start to wonder about tournaments are exploiting her for their benefit. It’s not about ‘Let’s bring Michelle here, what a nice girl and what a refreshing spirit.’ It becomes ‘How can we make our tournament better?’ And that looks a bit tacky.”

On the other hand, Wie continued to pick up fans, such as Paul Azinger.

“I thought she’d get waxed out here, but she’s proved me wrong,” he said. “I’m not sure what it means when you’ve got somebody out here playing on tour who needs adult supervision to drive a golf cart, though.”

Wie said she would consider playing another PGA Tour event this year if she has time but has already scheduled the Kraft Nabisco Championship and Safeway tournament from the LPGA.

All in all, Wie said she was satisfied with how she played.

“I think I did good,” she said. “I struggled and fought. I made a couple of really good putts. I made two birdies in the last three holes. I think I did pretty good.”

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Against the Men

Michelle Wie’s record for two days at the Sony Open in Honlulu, at which she shot a 72-68-140, missing the cut by one stroke:

*--* Rnd 1 Rnd 2 Avg./Tot. Putts 31 23 27 Driving accuracy 79% 57% 68% Birdies 3 4 7 Driving distance 278 264 271 Bogeys 5 2 7 Sand saves 50% 100% 60% Pars 10 12 22 Greens in regulation 67% 44% 56% Putts per greens in regulation 1.83 1.50 1.70

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