Michelle Wie is going to play in another PGA tour event against the men. Apparently this upsets some people, including Beth Ann Balry who took it upon herself to bash the teenager for swerving out of her lane.
People do this with Wie and I don’t understand it at all. So what she’s never won an LPGA event? So what some girl named Paula Creamer is better than her? So what she gets mashed every time she tees up against the guys? None of that is any of our business. If some PGA event sponsor wants to hook her up with several hundreds of thousands of dollars to play three or four days of golf then why shouldn’t she take it? She never wins when she plays against the women either and they don’t even bother to pay her an appearance fee. So what gives?
Sportswriters in this country have an odd outlook on how athletes should behave. Athletes should do what’s best for their sport and for their game and for their fans. Why should they do that exactly? I work in television news. If I happen to be pumping gas outside a station and someone runs in and robs it, should I grab my cellphone camera and make sure my station gets the first video of the robbery? That would be the best thing for my network, for my viewers. If I chose instead to call 9-1-1 and chill across the street drinking a milkshake at Chik-fil-a while watching what goes down, should I be called out in the journalism press? Why should I be required to do anything other than what I feel is best for me and my family? Why should Michelle Wie?
Maybe she’s not out to build the LPGA into something that rivals the NBA or NFL. Maybe she couldn’t care less about breaking whatever career records currently stand in the LPGA. Maybe she just likes playing golf, happens to be pretty good at it, and can make a bajillion dollars without ever winning because she also happens to be a 6-foot-tall cutey. And at the end of the day, what’s wrong with that?
As the New York Times noted in the process of dogging her out, Michelle Wie has made upwards of $30 million playing golf and endorsing products, and not at all in that order. I’m sure she wants to be a really good professional golfer. After all, don’t we all want to be considered good at what we do? But does she have the drive to become the best golfer? Only she knows that. And you know what? It doesn’t matter if she does or doesn’t. We would all like to believe that everyone is driven to be the best, but that just happens not to be true. Some people want to do what it takes to make their money, take it easy, and enjoy their lives. And that’s just as valid as the other outlook. Michelle Wie may be the Anna Kournikova of golf, but Anna Kournikova is living a pretty good life off the proceeds she made being a first-rate cutey and a third-rate professional tennis player.
Why is it always folks who didn’t develop great talents who bash those who did for wasting them? If you’d worked as hard all your life as Michelle Wie to become a great golfer, then you would do it differently. Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t. At the end of the day, you didn’t work that hard and she did. So she gets the option of wasting her talent or not. It’s hers to waste. She earned it. Just like she earned those $30 million.
