MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – What a strange day for Michelle Wie. That ‘WD’ sitting next to her name doesn’t even begin to tell the story of Round 1 at the Ginn Tribute. Only the couple dozen fans who showed up on the 10th tee this morning for the 7:26 a.m. pairing have some idea of what transpired out there, but even then it’s a little fuzzy.
Wie started off the day innocently enough with a 3-wood off the tee and a two-putt from the fringe for par. She then took out her driver on the par-5 11th and promptly hit it right into a pond. On No. 12 she snap-hooked her drive into the trees and made double-bogey, at which point her father, B.J., dropped to his knees in disbelief.
Unfortunately, Wie was just getting warmed up.
Her card, which is now off the lpga.com live scoring leaderboard and listed only in calligraphy on the board in the media center, reads like this: one birdie (No. 18, her ninth hole), seven pars, five bogeys, one double, one triple and a 10 on the par-5 third.
That adds up to 14 over par through 16 holes. After bogeying the par-4 seventh, her 16th hole of the day, Wie walked up to an LPGA official and said: “We’re not going to play anymore.”
It didn’t go unnoticed that Wie was getting dangerously close to shooting 88, the kiss of death for non-members. If a non-member shoots 88 or higher, she is banned from the tour for the rest of the year. If Wie plays her last two holes 2 over, she’s not playing next week in the McDonald’s LPGA, the Evian Masters, Ricoh British Open, the CN Canadian Women’s Open or the Samsung World Challenge. She would still be eligible for the U.S. Women’s Open because she tied for third in Newport last year.
When asked about it after the round, Wie said an 88 was the “farthest thing” from her mind.
“I don’t think about shooting 88,” she said. “That’s not what I do.”
Wie said she WD’d because of her wrist injury. Immediately after she was carted back to the clubhouse, a bag of ice was put on her left wrist and she went into a private room to talk things over with her parents and agent, Greg Nared, before facing the media.
“Yeah, I felt good when I was practicing but I kind of tweaked it in the middle of the round a bit,” said Wie. “I’m going to reanalyze it and kind of try to be smart about it. But I definitely want to play next week.”
Wie didn’t appear to be wincing in pain during the round. One of her playing partners, Alena Sharp, said she never saw Wie hold her wrist.
“I think she withdrew because of the high score, definitely,” said Sharp. “If it was a wrist injury problem don’t you think she would have withdrawn after a few holes? Why wait until the last two?”
Sharp said she actually thought Wie would pack it in at the turn after she made a triple-bogey on the par-3 14th.
That hole caused quite a bit of stir after Wie hit her tee shot right of the green and into some trees. Wie, her caddie, David Clark, her parents and several volunteers were searching through the leaves for several minutes looking for her Nike ball. When it was found, Wie declared it unplayable and began mulling over her options.
B.J. Wie mentioned something about going back to the tee.
“It’s three off the tee, isn’t it,” Clark responded in a voice that suggested he didn’t think it was such a good idea.
Shortly thereafter Wie declared that she was heading back to the teeing area. Her next shot promptly hit it a tree on the right side and landed several yards back from where she’d been minutes earlier. She chipped onto the green and two-putted for a 6.
Sharp and Janice Moodie, the other competitor in the threesome, were concerned that B.J. had given advice during the course of the hole. Moodie approached B.J. as Michelle marched back to the tee.
When the hole was completed, B.J. hung back to speak with LPGA rules official Angus MacKenzie to see if there was going to be a penalty assessed.
Because Wie did not ask her father for advice, it was decided there would be no penalty. Players determined that B.J. Wie simply offered up one of the options under the unplayable rule.
MacKenzie went on to say, however, that Moodie and Sharp did the right thing in questioning Wie, because if communication between parent and child were to continue throughout the round and it was deemed that Wie had asked for advice, a two-stroke penalty would have been assessed under Rule 8.
The bottom line here is that B.J. Wie should not have said one word to his daughter. Clark, a former PGA Tour caddie, surely knows the options she faced in her situation and is capable of advising his player.
“I’m going to talk to B.J. the next time I see him at the McDonald’s next week and tell him that by doing that, he’s opened up a can,” said MacKenzie.
Sharp said she learned something about the rules today after speaking with MacKenzie.
“Anybody can say something from outside the ropes and you won’t get penalized unless you ask (for it),” said Sharp. “And she didn’t ask.”
But that hardly seems like it embodies the spirit of the rule, especially when it’s a parent or coach doing the talking. Sharp had strong feelings about B.J.’s role in the episode. By the time she reached the practice range after her round, everyone was talking about it.
“He was giving the options and he shouldn’t have been giving them,” said Sharp. “He was too close.”
Of course that hole paled in comparison to Wie’s disaster on the third hole. Wie pushed her drive right out of bounds and down a cement drain on the side of the road. She hooked her provisional into the hazard and had to head back to the tee to hit her fifth shot. By this point, LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens was standing off to the side of the hole speaking with tournament officials.
“It was actually quite funny,” Wie said of her first drive. “I was going to crawl down the drain and prove that it was in bounds, but I couldn’t fit into that drain so I couldn’t do that.”
At the time, Wie certainly didn’t appear to think anything about the situation was particularly funny.
Soon Nared was whisked away in a caddie shuttle, only to return several holes later, talking on his cell phone. He huddled with Wie’s parents on the sixth hole and was then summoned over on the seventh by Chris Higgs, the tour’s senior vice president and chief operations officer, who showed up in a cart.
When asked if he and Nared talked about the 88 rule, Higgs said the conversation was between him and Nared.
Wie’s new caddie, Clark, said he wasn’t allowed to comment on anything.
David Leadbetter, who is at the PGA Tour’s Memorial this week, heard about his pupil’s WD through the grapevine. He said the wrist was troubling her during practice rounds when he was with her earlier in the week in Mt. Pleasant. Monday was only the second time in five months Wie had played 18 holes.
“The doctors said this is natural,” said Leadbetter. “You’re going to have some pain in your wrist, you’re just going to have to play your way through it. ... I said to her and to her parents, keep your expectations low this week.”
But here in Low Country, even this is low.
While Wie and her family were hashing things out behind closed doors after the round, Bivens waited outside.
“We’ve all had those days in our professions,” said Bivens. “It doesn’t feel good.”
– Alex Miceli contributed
Posted: 5/31/2007
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