If you haven't had enough of the hype insanity surrounding MIchelle Wie, there is another young, phenom player making headlines in women's golf. Her name is Alexis Thompson and she is, wait for it.....12 years old! This youngster has become the youngest player to ever qualify for the U.S. Open. She is more than six months younger than the former record holder, now 18-year old Morgan Pressel. Yes, that's right-she's not even a teenager and she is playing is the biggest event in women's golf.
Check out her segment on ABCNews Thursday night. Click graphic to view:
With a new women's golf media darling, how is Michelle Wie doing? Terrible. I could outline how awful her first round was but I thought it would be better to let someone else's words describe her meltdown; someone more respected and unbiased. I'll let Doug Ferguson from the AP spill the beans...
About the only thing that wasn't much of a surprise was Michelle Wie, who continued her free fall with an 82, the second time in three rounds she has failed to break 80, this one matching her highest score in the Women's Open.
...The 17-year-old player from Hawaii teed off early and fell off the map quickly. She hit only four fairways, four greens and offered an assessment that was difficult to grasp. "It's just a very fine line between shooting 69 and shooting what I shot today," said Wie, who has gone 21 rounds without breaking par.
...[Anglea] Park [the 18-year old actual leader of the tournament] played before hardly any gallery, most of them watching Wie self-destruct. Time and again, the Hawaii teenager [Wie] posed on a shot, only to have the club slide through her hands as she realized the shot was off its mark. "I know I'm a better player than this," Wie said.
Are you? Are you a better player than your +11, 82 in the first round? One would think that in a string of 21 consecutive rounds, a golfer who actually has any mature talent could muster at least one shot below par, in either men's or lowly women's golf. I say lowly because this is how Wie seems to look at the women's tour, as beneath her stellar talent. Never mind that she had NEVER WON a professional tournament, men's or women's.
The media insanity will only have to last one more round until she fails to make the cut. Then serious, professional golfers can focus on what most fans and reporters have forgotten, the attention and prize money and acclaim go to the best golfer, not the biggest clown. Let us hope that lesson will not be lost on young Alexis Thompson. No doubt it surely is. For Alexis chose to play in the women's U.S. Open before trying to play in a men's tournament.
You don't have to be a sports fanatic to have heard about Michelle Wie. Chances are, however, you have never heard of Paula Creamer. Wie is a 16 year old golf phenom that just signed large sponsorship 
The disqualification notwithstanding, if the broad strokes of this story sound familiar: young and attractive media darling bursting on the professional sports scene; you have. It is remarkably similar to the career of monumentally mediocre women's tennis player and male magazine pin-up starlet Anna Kournikova. Like Kournikova, Michelle Wie, has never won a professional event. Both have also ridden the hype of professional expectation into bankrolling their very lucrative marketing machines. Though it hurts me to say, Michelle Wie is the Anna Kournikova of golf. 
