Michelle Wie, who turned sixteen and pro last month, will be as much a force of nature in golf as Tiger Woods has been. She will beat all of the women and some of the men. She will make more money than any female sports star in history. She will be the first woman to play in the Masters and the men's U.S. Open. She will be the LeBron James of women's golf and make $100 million before she turns twenty.
Michelle Wie will someday win a tournament on the PGA Tour and break all of Annika's records on the women's tour and become the first golfer in recorded history to make television viewers watch the LPGA in droves.
She will become as famous around the world as Michael Jordan once was and Tiger is now.
She will be one of those rare athletes who not only lives up to the hype but airmails it the way those drives of hers already airmail all the competition in women's golf.
Or she won't.
She will have traded away her childhood and any chance of being a normal teenager or high school student or college kid—her father, B.J., still says she's going to Stanford; sure she is, right after pigs fly—for the money that people have been waiting to throw at her since she was thirteen. Not only won't she win the way people expect her to—on any tour—she won't come close. She won't be able to putt in the heat the way Jack did, or the way Tiger does. She will take your breath away with her length, her talent, her grace—all that—but she won't be able to close the deal nearly often enough.
She will get injured. She will get injured the way Martina Hingis, another teen phenom, got injured. Or she will lose interest in being a champion as fast as Serena Williams, B-list actress, clothes designer, reality-TV star, did. She will do what Serena has done: treat being a superstar in her sport like a part-time job.
Am I saying any of that is going to happen to Michelle?No. If I had to bet, I'd bet the opposite. She seems like a great kid with a great work ethic, someone who has accepted the loss of "normal" the way all great prodigies do, has understood from the time she was eleven or twelve that a talent like hers takes "normal" out of play the way a power fade takes the left side of the golf course out of play.
But it could happen, because of something in sports that never changes, no matter how big and strong and gifted you look coming out of the blocks:
There are no sure things, no matter how much they pay you on the way in the door, no matter how much potential you have, because it's never just talent in sports. Because there's luck involved, too, and serendipity, and brains and nerve, and ego and arrogance, and sometimes even just a touch of cruelty. You think Tiger is a sweetheart?Look how he turns his own game into a crowded L.A. freeway when he thinks it might rattle a guy.
Tiger Woods turned out to be the real deal—the whole world officially saw it that very first autumn when he turned pro and won two events. LeBron James, so far, has turned out to be the real deal, but you know something?He's going to have to do it for more than two or three seasons before he goes down as a phenom who justified the hype.
Everything we have seen from Wie so far, everything she has done in both women's and men's golf, makes you think that she is going to be the real deal as well.
Or not.
