Not a good week for Michelle Wie.
First the former teen phenom finishes next-to-dead last in the 20-player field of the Samsung World Championship, shooting 79-79-77-71, then her agent, Greg Nared, quits after a year. If you're counting, that's two agents in two years.
If you ask me, Nared bailing is one more indication that the Wie star is crashing to earth. A former Univerisity of Maryland hoops star who lived and worked as Nike's man inside the Tiger Woods bubble for years, Nared evidently had more than a bellyful of Mom and Dad Wie. That and the high-maintence coddling of the prodigy.
What happens now? What self-respecting, respectable agent will sign on now? Especially at a time when Wie seems to want to shelve her golf life for the life of the Stanford student.
She's too young and too good to be written off forever, but the road to the top keeps getting longer and steeper for Michelle Wie.
4 comments:
Maybe someday she'll divorce herself from her parents. Reminds me of Jennifer Capriati, the tennis player.
I asked her to prom and she repectfully declined. since then, her play has not only been more erratic but her social life has suffered. Her prodigous reputation has been marred by her daddy's girl, "hurt" wrist, Stanford wannabe, too-good-to-take-a-guy-shorter-than-me attitude. now, no one respectable, including her agents, will say yes to her. an uphill battle to the top turned into a battle to keep her feet.
I think that Wie probably would have been a flop even if she had gone about her career the "right way". Plenty of sports prodigies don't make the transition from teen phenom to adult star. It's not that uncommon. There are no guarantees in sports. Obviously her problem was in her head all along, (I think the wrist was just cover), but I think that would have happened anyway.
SteveMG
She will not play in the Casio World Open, a men's event in Japan. Thank goodness.
http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=afp-golfusajpnwie
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