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Eleven-Year-Old Girl Challenges Hawaii’s Top Male Golfers

By Jaymes Song/AP

Michelle Wie, 11, is shown at the Olomana Golf Course. Associated Press.

Michelle Wie is having trouble finding competition on the golf course, and she’s only 11 years old.

Wie, who says some of her sixth-grade classmates call her a “golfing geek,” already has defeated the top female golfers in the state and is now taking on the men. Her goal next year is to supplant 13-year-old Morgan Pressel as the youngest U.S. Women’s Open qualifier. She missed this year, shooting a 76 in qualifying.

Wie made history on June 5 when she teed off in the Manoa Cup at the Oahu Country Club. She is the first female — and the youngest player ever — to qualify for the 94-year-old tournament, the oldest in Hawaii.

She joined the match-play field with 63 of Hawaii’s top male golfers after shooting a 5-over round off the men’s tees.

Last month, Wie won Hawaii’s premier women’s amateur tournament, the 54-hole Jennie K. Wilson Invitational, where she finished 4-over 220, beating runner-up and defending champion Bobbi Kokx by nine strokes.

When the 5-foot-9 Punahou School sixth-grader “grows up,” her goal is to “play in the PGA and win lots of tournaments.”

That’s PGA, not the LPGA.

“A friend of mine told Michelle, ‘You’re the next Se Ri Pak,”’ said her father, Byung Wook Wie, referring to the LPGA star from South Korea. “She was kind of frustrated. She wants to be the next Tiger Woods.”

Wie spends four hours every weekday at Olomana Golf Links on Oahu, where she once shot a 64 on the par-73 course.

“I don’t like going to the mall,” Wie said. “I’m not really like the other girls. I just like to go out on the golf course and play.”

Her routine includes 45 minutes of putting, 30 minutes on the short game, 45 minutes on the range and nine holes of play.

During practice, she dropped 20-foot putts like an NBA player sinks free throws and consistently drove the ball way past the 200-yard marker.

Wie spends seven to eight hours practicing on the weekends, but she still maintains straight A’s.

Wie has been playing since she was 4 and said golf is simply “fun.” Like all golfers, she loves to see her shots soaring toward a faraway target.

“The best part about golf is when you hit the ball long, it feels really good,” Wie said. She knows about length off the tee. When Gov. Ben Cayetano signed a proclamation honoring Wie, he noted that her 270-yard drives are about 50 yards longer than his.

Wie, a Korean American, said she admires other women golfers of Korean descent, such as Pak, Grace Park and Mi Hyun Kim, but it’s Woods she idolizes because he’s “good at everything.”

Like Woods, she wants to attend Stanford before turning pro.

“She is like the Tiger Woods for Hawaii,” said Sean Lunasco, president of 808golf.com, a Web site about golf on the islands. “She put women’s golf in Hawaii on the map.”