Nabisco 2003: Wie Wie Monsieur

The past couple years, a freight train has been slowly gaining steam on the outskirts of women's golf. Rumors, isolated amazing accomplishments, awed remarks by those in the know: slowly, inexorably the hype has been building. And in the center of that hype has been a 13 year old girl from Hawaii with a powerful game and enormous potential. Her name is Michelle Wie, and she made her LPGA Major debut at this year's Kraft Nabisco Championship. To put it mildly, even the hype did not prepare us for the reality.

Michelle started playing golf at the age of four, but I first heard of her when she was ten. An article in a Honolulu paper proclaimed that Grace Park and Se Ri Pak had better win while they could, because a new golfing prodigy was coming who would take the tour by storm. I naturally assumed they were talking about Aree Wongluekiet (now Aree Song), who had just finished tenth at the 2000 Nabisco Championship as an extremely precocious 13 year old. But no, this was a new prodigy: a ten year old who was already beating the best amateurs Hawaii had to offer. That same year, Michelle had become the youngest girl to ever qualify for a USGA event, the US Public Links Championship. Though she did not win it, it was still an auspicious debut on the national stage.

Michelle Wie in round 1 of the Nabisco
AP Photo/Larry Ignelzi

Even at that young age, Michelle was big and powerful. So powerful, in fact, that she dared to speak about someday playing on the PGA tour. That's right, against the men. From the same tees. To prove it was not idle chatter, she tried, as a ten year old, to qualify for the PGA's Sony Open, which is played in her own backyard. Though she shot an 84, and obviously did not succeed in making the field, the audacity of the move left many impressed.

It would not be the only time, over the next few years, that Michelle would pit herself against the men in Hawaii. Thereafter she became a permanent fixture in most of the island's male amateur and open championships, where she would often be both the only girl and the only pre-teenager competing.

Yet she still had relatively little objective success in girl's competitions. One reason for this is that she was too young to qualify for AJGA events, which left her with women's amateur events to compete in. She has done well in those, but again, nothing that would suggest she would be ready to compete with the best women pros in the world.

But as a 12 year old last year, she didn't let this stop her from trying to qualify for the LPGA's Takefuji Classic, the Hawaiian stop on tour. And lo and behold, she did it, shooting in the 80s in extremely difficult conditions. In so doing, she became the youngest girl to ever qualify for an LPGA event.

Her notoriety thus went up a notch, even though she ended up missing the cut and following eventual winner Annika Sorenstam around on Sunday. But shortly thereafter she participated in a pro-am at the PGA's Sony Open, and that's when the hype started to accumulate. There's a story that she went to the practice tees where the men were practicing and started hitting drives. By her third shot, every male pro had stopped hitting and turned to watch the by now six foot pre-teen wallop the ball. PGA vet Tom Lehman was so impressed by her talent that he gave her the nickname 'The Big Wiesy', a playful comparison to PGA superstar Ernie Els and his long, smooth swing. Els, of course, is known as 'The Big Easy'.