Whatever happened to Michelle Wie?

Hawaii’s darling professional golfer now has a greater appreciation for why golf is flog, spelled backwards.

For a few years, Michelle Wie could do no wrong. She challenged the men on a PGA event. She didn’t win a tournament on the women’s tour, but she came close half a dozen times.

These days she can’t do anything right, especially hit a golf ball like she used to. Whatever happened to Michelle Wie?

Sports is often more a game of attitude and confidence than talent. True, to get to the top, talent has to be there and by all accounts, Michelle Wie had more than her share of both– talent and confidence.

Did the recent wrist injury dilute the talent or erode the confidence? Or, both? As one of the Wie Watchers, I suspect her recent Wie Woes to be a little of both; diminished talent, and diminished confidence, with no shortage of distractions.

It happens. The teenage years are difficult for the best of youngsters, male or female, let alone a 6 foot child prodigy working her way through high school and college as a professional athlete. It can’t be easy. Along the way, Michelle has lost a few handlers– caddies, managers, friends.

She’s also lost her gifted touch with golf clubs. The drives are still long and powerful but eerily off target. Putting was never Michelle’s strong point, made even more so as the hole on each green seems to move left or right following each putt or chip shot. Finishing dead last in a tournament is more common than making the cut.

What’s the problem? Distractions? A boy (she’s a student at Stanford now)? Injury? Confidence? All of the above. Whatever it is, we wish her well.

“Michelle Wie, we hardly knew ye.”