"This is utter rubbish and it has to stop."

Dottie Pepper in the current SI Golf Plus:

What will it take for Team Wie to realize that things simply aren't working? There were whispers in tour circles earlier this season that her driver was actually heavier and stiffer than Tigers Woods's driver. Even if that's not true, it shows how poisonous the atmosphere around Wie has become. Some believe Michelle hasn't had a personal lesson with her teacher, David Leadbetter, in a very long time. Still, a simple video comparison from three years ago should make her deterioration apparent and be a wake-up call for Michelle's dad, B.J., who seems to have become her day-to-day coach. At the same time, B.J. and Michele's mom, Bo, have moved to Palo Alto, Calif., where Michelle is a freshman at Stanford.

This is utter rubbish and it has to stop. Michelle has already sacrificed her childhood, and now her college experience is in jeopardy as well. Let Michelle grow up and make her own decisions. Her play might or might not rebound. But what's happening right now goes way beyond birdies, bogeys and bank accounts. It's stifling the person as well as her game.

Great to see someone (as usual, Pepper) willing to state such an important point about Wie's future well being.

Comments

[kudzu]

Does anyone really care about this story anymore? Pepper's tone ("This is utter rubbish"-- channeling Peter Alliss here, too?) indicates a truly anachronistic level of passion. Why did SI print this? Who's got time for a bad review of a movie that closed several months ago?

[Ronald Montesano]

Actually, creeping vine, THIS is exactly the time when we need to care. Until now, she may have simply been a distant figure of great potential. Her failings and the failings of her family have humanized her, and have exposed an even greater potential for destruction of quality of life (loss of early life has already occurred). NOW you should care.

[jneu]

You cared enough to read and comment, kudzu. So I guess we've got that question answered.

I realize Dottie's there to do commentary, but the piece is journalistically troubling. "Some believe..." "There were whispers..." "Even if it's not true..." -- in other words, we don't really know. We suspect, but it's really just gossip. Maybe Michelle IS doing what she wants the way she wants, and that's the reason she's not getting the results she used to get. We don't know. We don't know anything.

Who we are at 14 is a lousy predictor of who we'll be at 18, 21, 25, etc. Michelle at 14 was a one-in-a-billion talent, and she had the bad fortune to rise in the era of Tiger Woods, who DID become everything his promise suggested he would. Because of that promise, she's financially set for life, so maybe it's not such bad fortune after all.

Straight-line progressions of development in sports only happen in retrospect; we miss all the others who fall away. Her pattern is probably more normal than we realize -- the unusual aspect being that her highs were so high.

We watch, and we do care, because she seemed so special when she emerged. Some young athletes hold out the promise of incandescence; that promise, that incandescence, is part of why we care about sports, which provide an arena for greatness. At 20, Dwight Gooden looked like he might be the perfect pitcher. We know how that story played out. I hope there are better things in store for Ms. Wie, even if they aren't the better things we predicted or wanted.

[Salt or Pepper?]

When Dottie rips the youngsters (this isn't the first time), is she being sincere or is there an underlying root (jealousy, perhaps) to her reason?
She called a 17-year-old kid (Mina Harigae) a "quitter" at the U.S. Women's Am after Hariage got whooped 5 &4. The "quitter" tag came despite the fact that Hariage's opponent Maria Uribe went 5-under thru the first nine. Is that really someone "quitting" or simply being beat?

[Frat Cat]

Ala Jennifer Capriati, in 10 years Michelle Wie will make a triumphant return to the upper echelon of women's professional golf. It will likely be brief, but I see her wining the Dinah Shore event.

She also may be over 200 el bees by that time. Anyone else notice the weight gain?

[86general]

I agree with jneu. It's so hard to know where Michelle will be in 10 years, and it wasn't really any easier to know 2 years ago when she seemed atop the world, or at least was portrayed that way.

I have no way to prove this, but I have a theory about golfers. At the root of it, all champion golfers have a game that is theirs alone, something developed entirely from within. Coaching and video and fitness and all of the other things the top pros do to stay ahead certainly count and are important, but if the core game identity isn't there, I don't think you can be a champion. I wonder if the development of Michelle's "golf soul" wasn't stunted or even aborted by her experiences during the last 3-4 years.