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Best Golfer from Each State: Hawaii Golf and Michelle Wie

By Christopher O'Day

KAPOLEI, HAWAII - APRIL 19: Michelle Wie watches her second shot on the 18th hole during the second round of the LOTTE Championship on April 19, 2019 in Kapolei, Hawaii. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
KAPOLEI, HAWAII - APRIL 19: Michelle Wie watches her second shot on the 18th hole during the second round of the LOTTE Championship on April 19, 2019 in Kapolei, Hawaii. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images) /
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We head to the Aloha State to check on Hawaii Golf and the best golfer from the state, none other than Michelle Wie.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that there are not a ton of professional golfers that hail from Hawaii. Yes, Hawaii golf has its fair share of great courses, but it always seems like more of a tourist destination than a hotbed for growing golfers. There has still been a decent amount to come from there, and Michelle Wie leads the way.

Although she is only 30, Wie has been a part of the golf world for 20 years already. At age 10, she became the youngest woman ever to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links championship.

Over the next six years, Wie would enter multiple Amateur Tournaments, setting multiple records both for scoring and youngest to enter the said event.

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By the age of 16, Michelle Wie was already the most accomplished to come from Hawaii Golf.

Michelle Wie would enroll at Stanford, like another young phenom by the name of Tiger Woods did early in the 90s. Unlike Tiger, she would go pro that same year and be deemed ineligible to play for the Cardinal due to her pro status.

Although she turned pro at the age of 16 in 2005, it took her around four years to finally make it to the LPGA Tour. Her first major accomplishment as a pro would come that year at the Solheim Cup when she led the American team with a 3-0-1 record on their way to a win.

Only a few months later, she would record her first professional win at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational. This would be the first of her current five wins on the LPGA Tour.

It all came together for her in 2014 at the U.S. Women’s Open. With six top-five finishes in Majors so far in her career, she had yet to find the winners circle at a major. It would all change that year, as she would carry on her momentum and drive from finishing second at the ANA Inspiration, the first major of the year. She would win the U.S. Women’s Open by two strokes, as she was the only woman under par, shooting -2.

Wie’s most recent win came in 2018 at the HSBC, where she would shoot 66-65 over the weekend to win by one stroke.

dark. Next. Best Golfers from Each State: Georgia Golf and Bobby Jones

There have been plenty of “child prodigies”, the “next” golfer in line, and it seems like hardly any of them work out, or stick around for very long. There is another woman, Jennifer Kupcho, on the rise who looks like she could be “next”, profiled earlier in our series. Although Michelle Wie may not have had the career that many people thought she would, she has still done quite well. She is definitely someone that Hawaii can be proud of, and takes the spot as the top golfer to hail from Hawaii Golf.

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