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Michelle Wie – Warming Up for 2016 (Video)

By Elizabeth Bethel

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Michelle Wie Fans: Don’t Despair! She’s not finished!

Michelle Wie is getting ready to start her 8th year on the LPGA Tour, her 11th year as a professional golfer. As the 26-year old six-footer with the stunning swing prepares to tee it up at the season-opening Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic, like Tony Jesselli, I’m wondering if Wie’s 2015 season was an aberration or if she hit her peak at the 2014 US Women’s Open.

Wie’s 2015 season never really got off the blocks. By May we all knew that the Tour’s most glamorous player wasn’t delivering the game we’d seen in 2014. Glamor aside, her heroic title defense at the 2015 US Women’s Open was one of the bravest athletic performances I’ve ever witnessed. But for most of the mid-season Wie was sidelined with illness and injury, and struggled mightily to get herself ready for her late-season Solheim Cup appearance.

That US Women’s Open performance confirmed what I’ve long-believed: Michelle Wie is a consummate professional athlete. She has what it takes to push her body and her mind beyond the limits of normal human endurance. She proved that last year. She’s been training since childhood to confront and successfully navigate the inevitable physical injuries athletes experience.

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Michelle Wie picked up a golf club and started swinging at the age of four. At ten she became the youngest player ever to qualify for the US Public Links Championship. At 11 she won both the Hawaii State Women’s Stroke Play Championship and the Jennie K. Wilson Women’s Invitational and at the age of 12, in 2002, she won the Hawaii State Open Women’s Division by thirteen shots. 

Amid not a little controversy the teen-aged Michelle Wie accepted sponsor invitations to tee it up at the Sony Open in Hawaii and the John Deere Classic; and when she turned pro the week before her 16th birthday she had already signed multimillion dollar sponsorship contracts with Sony and Nike.

Some predicted that Wie would never be able to live up to the early “phenom hype” that accompanied her turning pro. Her response lay in her performance.

Over the course of her six years of competition on the Tour Wie has established solid credentials.  She’s recorded 48 top-10 finishes. She’s won the US Women’s Open in a stunning Sunday afternoon shootout with Stacy Lewis. She’s represented the United States four times at the Solheim Cup.

I won’t digress into Wie’s off-course accomplishments, not because they are unimpressive but because they don’t bear on the question of her disappointing 2015 season. To be sure, there are those who have suggested that Wie needs to spend more time on the range and less time at the easel. I hope she ignores those voices. A champion athlete does not need to be unidimensional; and no one would think Michelle Wie unidimensional.

Michelle Wie, like all golfers, has come out of an injury-related slump before. There’s no reason to not assume that she’ll do it again. Her swing is strong and confident and, from where I’m sitting, Michelle Wie looks good for a bright 2016.

If this swing from the CME Group Tour Championship is predictive, I’m looking for Michelle Wie to start strong and stay strong in 2016.

Maybe she’s already gotten started. Check out her ace at the Bears Club from earlier this week:

Let’s hope she brings that game to the Bahamas next week.

Next: Women's Golf: 10 to Watch in 2016

We’ll get our first look at Michelle Wie’s 2016 game next week at the Tour’s season opening Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic. On to Paradise Island!

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