Her star faded, Michelle Wie now faces irrelevancy

WILLIAMSBURG

It's hard to look at 18-year-old Michelle Wie without thinking she's already played the best golf of her life.

Not long ago Wie was an honest-to-God phenom, bombing tee shots with a long, languid swing. Contending for major titles. Talking - with a giggle and the blind boldness of youth - of skipping the LPGA Tour all together for a run on the men's circuit.

She never won, and never really learned to win against her peers, which remains a serious flaw in her development. Still, the Hawaiian prodigy got rich with sponsorship millions and was positioned to become the Tigress.

Today, the thought of Wie competing with men is laughable. She's not even a very good female pro.

She rarely shoots, let alone breaks, par. This from a kid who in 2005 finished second three times and third once in eight events, who in '06 logged one runner-up, three thirds and two fifths in eight others.

Wie's swing has morphed from a graceful, almost contortionist's loop to a mechanical, over-rehearsed slash. Thursday - in her first tournament round since February, when she finished last - the swing produced a blah, 4-over-par 75 at the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill. She ended the round with a better score than only 10 golfers in the 144-player field.

Yes, she broke bones in her wrist last year - her best score all season was 71 - and tweaked it again this year, which can't be minimized. Yes, her body and life have changed as her priorities have shifted - she's a rising sophomore at Stanford, remember.

And yes, from appearances, her parents, who shadow her every step, still are suffocating her.

Just to be clear, none of that is a crime. Nor is it any reason for Wie to wear a disguise, change her name, or for fans to not want her autograph anymore.

Playing pro golf at 18 is still reserved for the rare and the talented.

The fact remains, however, that Wie cannot play the game anything like she once did. And there is something melancholy in that, particularly in the nagging thought that Wie's days of relevancy could have somehow come and gone.

Wie disagrees, of course, as she should if she's going to reclaim her equilibrium.

"No, not at all," she said after Thursday's slog when asked if she feared being unable to recapture her past. The problem is, to express that self-assurance, Wie is whistling past a slew of sprayed drives, loose irons and shaky putts.

She does get the benefit of the doubt: Wie is fresh off a month of practice in Florida with guru David Leadbetter, but competitive rust doesn't instantly vanish just because you put yourself back into competition.

Wie is truly deluding herself, though, if she believes what she insisted after her round, that she "hit the ball really well" and was just a "couple of bad breaks" from a good score.

I saw all 75 of her shots. She hit the ball "really well" hardly at all, looked uncomfortable much of the time and inspired little confidence with her inability to produce shots on a forgiving morning on the River Course.

She had only a couple real birdie putts - she converted one - and actually got more good breaks than bad. Hooked drives on Nos. 7, 13 and 16, just to name three, were bee-lining hard toward trouble before either kicking off trees or slopes into playable lies.

On the day, Wie hit just 8 of 14 fairways and 10 of 18 greens, some of the more dismal numbers in the field. Numbers that certainly don't predict a weekend stay for Wie.

"She hit some squirrely shots today, which is going to happen," said Wie's playing partner Diana D'Alessio, whose 65 trumped Wie by 10 strokes. "But she's got just an enormous amount of talent."

Wie's talent might still be there, but her game clearly is not. Nobody is eager to pronounce it gone for good. But it's amazing to think that, even at 18, the clock is ticking on Wie's search for her former self.

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com