Archive for the 'Lumber Classic' Category

With a 5 over 77 yesterday and a 9 over 81 today, Michelle Wie needs to stop sounding like she doles out excuses rather than causes.

She played well yesterday, she did hit her irons well, and she did play well off the tee. Although she was rarely inside 10 ft of the pin in regulation she still had oportunities. Speaking of her putting yesterday she said it “let her down.”

Ok, fine, that’s not really an excuse, she didn’t putt well and all those watching could see it. but to end her press conference saying:

“It was frustrating, because I was hitting every putt on line and about
six or seven looked like going in the middle and sometimes they hit a
spike mark, sometimes a footprint,”

Well, that’s just “junk” to use a word so often used to describe BS in Hawaii. Every other person out there had to contend with those same ball marks and spike marks. Sure you had the last tee time of the day but enough of the excuses already. How about today? Sitting at nearly last, only 9 players went out before you. Surely they didn’t mark up the green that bad.

You were nine over. 9.

Now I am all for women’s rights, and I think it’s great that you’re trying to compete on the men’s tour. But maybe you should begin to feel as though you need to earn your spot on the men’s tour and play some qualifying tournaments, how about you hop over to the nationwide tour and try and qualify for your PGA card rather than sliding in on a sponsors expemption. Maybe then the PGA tour can get back to it’s pre freak-show status.

Don’t you feel bad that because you’re a women, yes, I’m saying it, only because you are a women do you get to go on the men’s tour, that’s it! Yes you’re a 16 year old women, but that’s it. Sure you can hit it far, but there are a few women on the LPGA tour that can hit the ball further.

By the way, as it stands now, MIchelle Wie will sit in last place for the second week in a row in a men’s tournament.

Source

technorati tags:Michelle, Wie, Lumber, Classic, PGA, LPGA, Golf

Michelle Wie began the day at the 84 Lumber Classic with optimism, a little bit of hope, and a whole lot of spectators. Crowds were out for the first round of the Classis to see Michelle Wie challenge the 7,500+ yard course.

Michelle started the first three holes on the with pars, things were looking good, she was in the mix, it was too early to tell, but she was handling the length of the course very well. Until the next three holes, all par 4’s took their toll. She had three straight bogey’s.

It wasn’t that her drives were errant and she had to scramble, the young Wie couldn’t get her short game going to save her. She hit 61% of greens in regulation and had 78.6% driving accuracy with an average drive of 274 yards. Her scrambling percentage was 43% and she average 2.091 putts per green in regulation. She didn’t make a birdie all day.

Couple that with two more bogeys on her second nine and she’s sitting at 5 over par tied for 125 place. Not quite the way Michelle had wanted the day to unfold. She played a late round, being the last to finish the course so we’ll have to wait and see what she has to say about the round. Hopefully she’ll take some learning experiences from this round.

technorati tags:Michelle, Wie, Lumber, Classic, Golf, PGA, LPGA

Tim Rosaforte of Golf Digest posted an article today comparing the likes of Maria Sharapova to Michelle Wie. Following this past two weeks intense US Open which saw the retirment of tennis great Andre Agassi and the 9th Grand Slam title of Roger Federer’s storied career, you couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the two women’s sports.Maria Sharapova won the women’s draw for her second grand slam title of her career, and at 19 years old, that speaks volumes. She’s played tough, winning her first slam at age 17, wimbledon two years ago, and inking some of the top sports and modeling contracts in the sport. She’s got it all, and as Tim points out, she doesn’t have to go playing the mens tournaments to prove to herself she can play golf.

Michelle Wie on the other hand seems to be telling the world she has to play mens tournaments, which is all fine and dandy, but shouldn’t she at least try and win a women’s event first, let along a major event? This week she has a 7,500 yard course, on the longer side of men’s tour courses and she just came off a course in Europe that is considered easy by men’s standards, where she finished dead last.
You have to ask yourself the questions Tim posed in his article:

(A.) Is Wie playing men’s golf to raise the level of her game on the
women’s tour?

(B.) Is she playing men’s golf because that’s where the money is?

(C.) Is she playing men’s golf because that’s where she believes
she’ll be playing someday — or is that just part of the marketing strategy?

What is she really playing these tournaments for? Is her father and agent doing the right thing. She is young and like young stars of hollywood, Michelle could be “scarred for life” by what the media will begin to do to her golf career. Sure she has the look, but so did Anna Kournikova, and after the world found out she didn’t have much of a Tennis game she soon fell by the sports wayside and into the pin-up calendar pile. A joke for most sports writers.

Let’s hope her agent, her father, and herself can begin to manage her game a little better than they have been.

technorati tags:Michelle+Wie, Golf, LPGA, PGA, Maria, Sharapova

Michelle Wie will be playing at the 84 Lumber classic which will be played during the week of September 11th to the 17th, 2006. Michelle Wie is accepting her sponsors exemption to play in the Men’s PGA tour event along with some of the PGA tour’s top players Vijay Singh, Aaron Baddeley, Ben Curtis and more.

Also joining Michelle Wie on sponsors exemption will be Australian teenage sensation Jason Day who has stormed through the amateurs to turn pro this year. They will try and work their magic on the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort.
Michelle will no doubt just try to hang with the men and make the cut will others will try battle for the outright lead and the Classic Championship. All this and a Ryder cup coming will make the next few months pretty exciting.

technorati tags:Michelle, Wie, Lumber, Classic, Jason, Day