Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie

Golf’s brightest star and its next big thing take on Japan

Tiger Woods looks to defend his Dunlop Phoenix Open title Courtesy of the Golf Times

Ten years ago, Tiger Woods was a precocious young buck storming his way through golf’s big names and establishing himself as the world’s No. 1 player. He was always expected to be No. 1, of course, but expectations and reality do not always see eye to eye. This is something Michelle Wie has to confront. She would do well to remember Justin Rose, who at 17 stunned the golfing world with a mesmerizing run at the 1998 British Open, where he chipped in brilliantly on the last hole and tied for fourth. With the money thrown at sports stars nowadays, Rose couldn’t help but turn pro. But he soon found out that being paid like one of the big boys and actually being one of the big boys were two entirely different things. With the expectations of the golf world upon him, he failed to make the cut in his first 21 tournaments.

Tiger, of course, didn’t have that problem. Woods not only found it difficult to miss the cut, he challenged for titles from the start. Yet 10, 12 years on, despite all he has achieved—or, more likely, because of it—the expectations on the Afro-Thai-American are just as great. So, missing the cut twice this year (let’s ignore the two majors that he won) is, so we are told, a sign of great calamity.

Last year, Tiger had a poor year, and it was only in November, when he came to the Dunlop Phoenix Open in Miyazaki Prefecture, that he managed to win a stroke-play tournament. So, perhaps he can rescue his year (you do know he’s missed two cuts, don’t you?) when he returns to defend his title November 17-20. There’s probably less pressure on Woods than appears in the media, and because it’s a non-PGA tournament, there shouldn’t really be any at all.

Not so for Michelle Wie, the Hawaiian who turned pro a few days before her 16th birthday and who will play in the Casio World Open (Nov 24-27) in Kochi on the JGTO, the Japanese men’s tour. For her, it’s Tiger all over again. As with Woods, the expectations on Wie are massive, and not without reason. For a start, she was 6ft tall (184cm) by the time she reached 15, can hit drives longer than many men, and has already produced a string of impressive results as an amateur; when she won the Women’s Amateur Public Links in 2003, she became the youngest ever winner of a USGA adult competition.

That should be enough for any 16-year-old to deal with, but Wie—whether by her own design or by being pushed into it—has heaped even more pressure on herself by challenging the men. In fact, making the ultimate challenge: She wants to play in the Masters at Augusta. She also wants to compete in the British Open, and the R&A (golf’s governing body in the UK) has said it will open qualifying to all, a move that has angered the men so much that some are now demanding they be allowed to play in women’s events. In the battle for sexual equality, this has a ring of fairness about it, but Wie’s challenge is not really about gender; it’s about being allowed to be as good as she can. In that sense, her participation in men’s events like the Casio World Open is a good way of testing herself. Of course, Wie isn’t even the best woman player in the world at the moment, and she still has homework to do. But sportsmen and -women should be allowed to challenge themselves against the best.

Maybe she should hang around for the Dunlop Phoenix tournament.

The Dunlop Phoenix Open (www.dpt.gr.jp) takes place Nov 17-20 at the Phoenix Country Club in Miyazaki. The Casio World Open (www.casio.co.jp/cwo) takes place Nov 24-27 at the Kochi Kuroshio Country Club in Kochi. See sports listings for details.

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