Colin Sheridan: Golf will be much the poorer without Michelle Wie West

Her retirement last week came as no surprise. Marriage, motherhood and injuries have brought fresh focus to her life, which will undoubtedly be richer for her latest choice.

Michelle Wie West exponentially elevated the profile of a sport that had long languished in the shadow of its male equivalent.

MICHELLE Wie West, the one time wunderkind of ladies golf, announced last week that she was stepping away from the professional game at the age of 32. 

She does so having won five LPGA tournaments, including the 2014 US Open. Some would argue that given her prodigious talent, it is a career unfulfilled. It's just as arguable, however, that the opposite is true; given the scrutiny her life and choices have been under since the age of ten, it's perhaps miraculous she had a successful career as an adult at all. Her greatest achievement may well be leaving it all behind on her own terms, with her sanity intact.

To fully appreciate how talented Wie West was as a junior golfer requires a little relativity. In 2000, she became the youngest player ever to qualify for the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship. At the age of ten. At 11, she was winning prestigious amateur tournaments such as the Hawaii State Women's Stroke Play Championship and the Jennie K. Wilson Women's Invitational. A year later she became the youngest player to qualify for an LPGA event, the Takefuji Classic, in her home state of Hawaii. In her 13th year, she made the cut at the US Women's Open, the youngest player ever to do so. Aged 14, she became only the fourth woman to play an official PGA Tour event (men's), missing the cut by a single stroke. 

This was the time of peak “Tiger Mania”, so the natural inclination for golf media and fans alike was to anoint Wie West the female Tiger. There were many obvious differences, though. Not least Wie West's extra curricular interests, especially that of education. When she finally turned pro amidst much fanfare at the age of sixteen, she did not seek an age exemption to become a full member of the LPGA tour, but instead played only a half-dozen events during school holidays. Even with such a restricted schedule, Wie West made six Top 5 finishes at majors before the age of 17. She was the definitive “phenom”, one who’s prodigious talent shone a much brighter light on the ladies game. She brought more cameras and sold more tickets, but for all the hero worship, there was naturally some resentment, too.

That early resentment mostly centred around Wie West’s treatment by sponsors who were perhaps more generous with their invitations and exemptions to her than to other, arguably more deserving pros. Further resentment festered over Wie West’s life choices, which included her decision to attend Stanford University as a full-time student, despite being a member of the LPGA tour at the time. As Woods was making history laying waste to the PGA tour - losing friends and alienating people along the way, Wie West was living in a co-ed dorm room on campus. To her, Stanford was a non-negotiable caveat to her golfing career. Earning a BA in Communications, she has often said, has been one of her proudest accomplishments.

To many, however, Wie West’s pursuit of self betterment off the course while reaping the benefits of sponsorship deals and preferential treatment stank of arrogance and indifference to a game that, many felt, had given her so much. She appeared indulged, even spoiled. Those who criticised her then likely never considered that it was Wie West who had exponentially elevated the profile of a sport that had long languished in the shadow of its male equivalent. Picking and choosing her moments to play was evidence of a person adamant to control her own destiny, and not to fall victim to the prison of fame and the expectation of others. So, she did what she wanted.

However easy she found golf as a child playing against grown-ups, it got considerably harder as an adult mixing it against her peers. In 2016 (still aged only 26, remember), she told reporters "When you are a kid, everything seems easy, that’s just the nature of life. I’ve had a lot of highs and lows, but I’ve gotten through it.” 

Her mid-twenties were a rollercoaster of highs and lows - tour victories pockmarked with missed cuts, withdrawals and persistent wrist injuries. Wie was supposed to be a “sure thing”, instead the same media that put that impossible moniker on her head wrote countless “Where did it all go wrong?” pieces. Wie West, ever human, wore many of her struggles on her face. She went through more caddies in a three-year stretch than another pro would in a career. She annoyed fellow players with her on-course attitude. Precocious, sometimes petulant, even at her lowest point, her star power never waned.

I saw Wie West play at the Solheim Cup in Killeen Castle in 2011. Her singles match, which she eventually lost to Norwegian Suzann Pettersen, was one of the most memorable in the competition's history. There was something about Wie West that captivated beyond her actual play. Maybe it was the “child-prodigy’ tag, maybe it was the fact that golf was not her everything, the way we wanted it to be. Some people have that unquantifiable thing. Wie West, had it in spades.

After seemingly losing her way, Wie West rediscovered enough of herself to win her solitary major at the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst No. 2. She was a 24-year-old veteran. That win seemed less a launchpad to world domination, and more a totem of defiance, a justification of an otherworldly talent that had, in her moment of victory, been finally fulfilled, just not in the way that any of us could have imagined. 

Her announcement last week came as no surprise. Marriage, motherhood and injuries have brought fresh focus to her life, which will undoubtedly be richer for her latest choice. The fairways she once strode, however, will be much poorer.