"Well, I mean I’m not really sure."

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Golfweek's Beth Ann Baldry offers this from Wednesday's LPGA media session with Michelle Wie.

Getting information from the Wie camp these days is nearly impossible. Actually, talking to Michelle about her injuries up until this week was not an option. Her agent, Greg Nared, and her father, B.J. Wie, forward all requests to Jesse Derris, the family spokesman who works for Ken Sunshine Consultants. And even then answers about the state of her injuries or upcoming schedule are vague at best.

Tuesday, finally, reporters had a chance to pepper Wie with questions and still, no answers. It’s almost as if the teenager bumped her head in the fall and now suffers from amnesia.

Question: When did you start practicing?

Wie: Well, I mean I’m not really sure. I forget. A lot’s been going on.

Which is funny because Wie frequently talked about how bored she got sitting on the couch when she couldn’t practice earlier this year.

“Truthfully, it kind of sucked,” said Wie of the time off. “Before I was like, ‘Oh God, I don’t want to practice. I don’t want to work out.’ But when I’m sitting on my butt all day watching TV it was like ‘I want to go out and work out and practice.’ ”

Wie is missing her high school graduation to play in this week’s event.

Question: When is that graduation, and what will the time be here when you’re supposed to graduate?

Wie: I don’t really know, actually.

Strange. Most seniors have that epic date etched on their brains. Wie said she gave the school her picture and joked that a full-size cardboard cutout would stand in her place.

Question: Well, now that we can talk to someone other than Derris, can you tell us little bit about the extent of your injuries?

Wie: Well, I don’t really want to go back into the past and talk about the injuries. ... It’s all better now and I don’t think that talking about the injury will help me or anyone.

Glad we got that cleared up.

 

Wie Injury Progress

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Bill Huffman on Michelle Wie skipping the Safeway as well as the LPGA's first major:

Tom Maletis, the president of the Tournament Golf Foundation that runs the Safeway International, said the injury also will keep Wie from playing the following week in the Kraft Nabisco Championship – the LPGA’s first major championship.

“I’ve been in constant contact with B.J. (her father) and the Wie camp,’’ Maletis said when asked about the 17-year-old superstar’s status for the Safeway International, which takes place March 22-25 at Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club near Gold Canyon.

“Officially, she’ll miss our event, and, unofficially, she’ll also miss the Kraft Nabisco. Apparently, last week she had the cast taken off, and the doctor found that (the injury) was not healing like it should – there was still some pain – and so the doctor put the cast back on for another two weeks.’’

Maletis said he was somewhat surprised that the official word on both tournaments had yet to be released.

“But B.J. told me she’s not going to play in either tournament,’’ Maletis said. “I mean, she would just be getting the cast off, and that’s hardly the time to make your first (LPGA) start of the season.’’

It’s been a frustrating 2007 for Wie to date. She showed up at the Sony Hawaiian Open on the PGA Tour in January with her right wrist bandaged, which Wie labeled a “little injury.’’ At the time, she said she wasn’t sure if the wrist was sprained or strained, or perhaps a pinched nerve.

In February, she fell while reportedly running backwards during a visit to Stanford, where Wie will attend college this fall. That injury was diagnosed as a severe sprain and her left wrist was put in a cast. Now, it’s in a second cast.

Running backwards, on a campus visit? 

"You should invite her to the next member-guest competition at your home club and she might actually win something."

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Thanks to reader Phillip for catching Butch Harmon's Michelle Wie-related comments to Mark Reason in the Sunday Telegraph.

Harmon's brutally honest, but it's hard to argue with what he has to say.

"The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous," he says. "Michelle has regressed. She is worse now at 17 than she was at 14. To continue telling us that she is getting better by playing with the men is an insult. She says it's a learning experience. What is she learning by finishing last? It's hurting her mentally.

"She should go play with the women and dominate that competition first. But the whole Michelle Wie camp is about money. The biggest difference between Earl [Woods, the father of Tiger] and BJ [Wie, Michelle's dad] is that Earl didn't worry about money. He knew it was more important for Tiger to learn to win and then the money would take care of itself. But Michelle Wie wins nothing.

"You should invite her to the next member-guest competition at your home club and she might actually win something because what's going on now is ridiculous. And it's not good for the game of golf."

 

Wie To Stanford

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Doug Ferguson has the details...

“No one really believed me,” Wie said from Orlando, Fla., where she is working with swing coach David Leadbetter. “Now that I got into Stanford ... it was one of my dreams, and I want to go through with it. I definitely want to go there and really try to graduate before I launch my golf course design firm."

Just checking to see if you were reading!

She has no plans to open up her own design firm. Not for at least 5 years. 

"She offers nothing more than gimmick value"

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After failing to break 80 in Japan, Michelle Wie's critics turned up the heat. Jim Armstrong and Elspeth Burnside in The Scotsman:

What is becoming more tragic is the continued attempts by Wie to play in men's events when it has long been clear that, however prodigious a talent she may be in women's golf, she offers nothing more than gimmick value and a touch of glamour to the men's game.

"She should not be put through that torture again"

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Thanks to reader DGS for sending this Mark Garrod story which I had glanced at and missed when it appeared a few days ago. I think George O'Grady might want to better choose his words when describing the whether Michelle Wie should be given future sponsor's exemptions:

"All our players back completely the invitation, but they actually share a concern for her that she should not be put through that torture again."

Yes, the torture of fulfilling an obligation to sponsors. It can be rough. 

"I mean, college life, I'm really looking forward to it"

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Okay, I promised I'd never have fun with a Michelle Wie session with the media. Not until she's 18. But this is, uh, noteworthy...

Q. Are you planning on going to college, and if so, in what field?

MICHELLE WIE: Yeah, I definitely want to go to college. I think that's very important for me to continue my education. I mean, college life, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not really actually certain on what I want to study, but definitely something like business or economics or marketing, somewhere around there I think would be really interesting.

And...

Q. Maybe this is the course, but I was just wondering what's your favorite course that the public can actually get out and play, your favorite public access course?

MICHELLE WIE: Well, this course is amazing. There's a lot of amazing holes out here, especially the one with the waterfall and the statue of John Daly. I think that's pretty cool. It's a fun golf course. I mean, it's wide and challenging.

A waterfall and a John Daly statue on the same hole? Oh yeah, it's over. The game has gone to hell.

"Wanted: caddie. Pay: great. Thick skin a must. Eventual termination: certain."

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p1_wiecaddie.jpgSI's E.M. Swift files a web-exclusive on the Michelle Wie caddie cavalcade, starting off with this from Juli Inkster (who used to employ pro jock Greg Johnston):
 "It would have been nice to get a phone call from the [Wie] family, saying this is what we're thinking of doing," Inkster told me after she took the first-round lead at the Women's British Open last week with a 66. "I'd had Greg for 11 years. It's not like I was some rookie.

"But that's not the way they [the Wies] do things. Instead they gave him a take-it-or-leave-it in the middle of my season, right before the Solheim Cup. I don't blame him. He's got kids to think about. But that didn't sit well."

Johnston was looking after his future, and there wasn't a caddie on the LPGA tour who wouldn't have done exactly the same thing. This despite the fact that the Wies had already gone through nine caddies between 2003 and '05, when Michelle was an amateur, and that "every time she misses a green, it's the caddie's fault -- except when Dad's on the bag," as one experienced caddie told me at last year's Women's British.
Wow, nine caddies, plus Johnson makes 10. Only two more to catch Spinal Tap's rumored dozen!

Here's the part about where Johnston lost his gig.
I was outside the scorer's trailer at Royal Lytham and St. Anne's last week when Wie got word that she'd been penalized two strokes for grounding her club in a sand trap during the second round. She had accidentally brushed away a clump of moss that was resting behind her ball during her backswing, a transgression that TV cameras clearly showed.

Johnston had told her she couldn't move the impediment, but Wie's parents, father B.J. and mother Bo, were visibly angry as they pulled their 16-year-old daughter aside to get her version of what had happened.

It was a tense scene. Wie's two bodyguards, dressed in Nike golf shirts, were rude and aggressive while keeping photographers and TV cameramen from filming the meeting -- never mind that it was taking place in a mixed zone where interviews routinely were conducted. Michelle was near tears. She hadn't known the rule. She thought if she just continued her swing, there was no violation.

Johnston should have known then and there that his days were numbered.