The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

In 2005, Michelle Wie nearly made the cut at the John Deere Classic and nearly won three LPGA Tour majors.

A year later, she nearly played her way into the men’s U.S. Open and nearly scored her first LPGA title at the Evian Masters.

Then, she nearly disappeared.

That’s why Wie’s newest near miss — a runner-up finish at last week’s SBS Open in her native Hawaii — is more good news than bad for we Wie fans, never mind that she again showed that distressing inability to close that made her “The Nearly Girl” in her mid-teens.

Wie had a three-shot lead with eight holes to go Saturday before suffering a double-bogey on the 11th hole and a bogey at 17.

JDC/Wie fans will recall that a double-bogey at Deere Run’s 6th hole followed by a bogey at 7 cost the then-amateur sensation a chance to become the first woman in 60 years to make a PGA Tour cut on what was her second-round back nine in 2005.

In each of her four previous LPGA Tour seconds, a loose late swing could be fingered as a culprit as well.

The SBS winner was Angela Stanford — how’s that for irony? Isn’t Wie, still a Bay Area collegian, losing to someone named Angela Stanford a little like Michael Jordan losing to someone named Sam North Carolina?

Stanford said she saw evidence that her teen-aged foil still has to learn how to win.

“She was doing everything she needed to win, and when she made the mistake on 11, she didn’t rebound like I thought,” said Stanford, an LPGA vet who has won three of her last seven starts. “You could see her youth in that.”

And yet and still, what you also could see throughout the three-round tourney in Hawaii was Wie’s immense talent, and, by reports, a return to the languid and fluid swing that earned a 13-year-old Wie her comparisons to Ernie Els.

That’s a significant and important change from 2007, when Wie seemed to have lost her way and her game, literally missing fairways left and right with a swing many thought went off-track when she tried to match the men she played at Deere Run and elsewhere in length.

“She seems to have the rhythm back in her swing,” wrote Golf Digest’s Ron Sirak, who has chronicled Wie’s career through the good and bad. “That wonderful Big Wiesy tempo … is back.”

The legion of Wie bashers, a few of whom certainly will be checking in at the bottom of this blog, long ago forgot that Wie, now a college sophomore, was and is just a kid, a youngster learning her way against the most compelling competition she could challenge.

 She still just is 19 years old and her first year as a full-fledged member of the LPGA Tour.

Her best golf remains ahead of her. And here’s guessing it shows up soon.

“The Nearly Girl” is nearly gone.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.