Wie beats Q-school, earns her LPGA tour card

After years of tournament participation based on nothing more than pure potential and celebrity sheen, Michelle Wie has finally qualified to join the LPGA tour for the coming 2009 season.  

Long a prodigy and media darling, Wie has played off-and-on in LPGA tour events since she was in seventh grade, awing crowds with 300-yard drives and flashes of major tournament success. However, in recent years the phenom’s golden edge has been tarnished somewhat, as she has suffered a stream of missed cuts and injuries, leading some to question the endorsements and special tournament invitations she has received (particularly, there has been resentment among tour members with regards to her tournament exemptions, each one of which prevents one qualified player from playing in that week’s tournament).

My own feeling with regards to Wie’s early career was always one of skepticism. For such a young woman to have sustained and consitent success in the world of professional sports was always an exceedingly rare prospect, and too often the attempt to facilitate that success cripples the athlete’s future prospects (as I stated above, it’s important to remember that Wie played her first LPGA event in seventh grade!). And I’m cynical too about the LPGA’s motives behind promoting her participation; despite what they’ll have us believe, their goal wasn’t to foster and encourage her success. The fact was that her presence drew crowds to otherwise unknown tournaments, created advertising possibilities, and otherwise offered the LPGA publicity and revenue.

Having said all that, these concerns are quickly become irrelevant, as Wie has now, like thousands of professional golfers before her, earned her own way onto the tour the old-fashioned way: by simply playing good golf. Now that she has accomplished this feat (in the process eliminating the impetus behind the resentment her ‘special status’ generated among other tour players), one hopes that she will be able to finally realize the dazzling potential that has been both her boon and her Achilles’ heel.