Wie returns to Q-C for golf, ice cream
Like any red-blooded, fashion-conscious, teenage American girl, Michelle Wie likes to accessorize. Case in point: The belt buckle reading “68” that the golfing phenom wore on the Friday afternoon of last year’s John Deere Classic in Silvis, Ill.
“I thought it was a really cool number,’’ she said.
It would have been.
Had Wie shot a second-round 68 at the Tournament Players Club at Deere Run, she would have become the first woman in 60 years, and the second ever, to make a mid-tournament cut on a Professional Golfers’ Association of America, or PGA, Tour event.
Instead, she shot even-par 71 behind a first-round 70 and finished two shots shy of a chance to play on the weekend.
Wie will be back in the Quad-Cities this week to take a second shot at Deere Run, and it is a safe bet she will be shopping for accessories between rounds at the 2006 John Deere Classic, or JDC.
She will, at least, visit a nearby Whitey’s Ice Cream shop. The girl wants all the toppings.
“Whitey’s Ice Cream, for sure,’’ the 16-year-old Wie said via a recent e-mail when asked to choose between a frosty treat and a famous JDC pork chop sandwich. “Particularly the ice cream pie with fudge, caramel and nuts.’’
Wie won’t need an allowance to buy ice cream. She turned professional in October and immediately signed $10 million worth of endorsement deals. Some estimates say her worth will grow to $40 million by year’s end.
If she makes history this week by making the JDC cut, Wie also will cash a piece of the tournament’s $4 million purse.
Or maybe she won’t cash it.
“I will definitely frame my first PGA Tour paycheck,’’ she wrote. “I wish it happens this year.’’
Wie already has earned a check in a 2006 men’s event. She won $4,303 when she made the cut at the Asian Tour’s SK Telecom Open in Seoul, Korea, during May.
She shot rounds of 70, 69 and 74 in the rain-shortened tournament at the par-71 Sky 72 Golf Club and credited her experience at last year’s JDC with helping during her solid second round.
“It definitely helped me stay calm and concentrate to make more birdies while avoiding unforced errors at the last six holes,’’ she said.
It was unforced second-round errors that cost Wie last year at Deere Run. She stood on the sixth tee, her 15th hole of the day, at four shots under par for the tournament, but she drove her ball into a fairway bunker with a 3-wood when laying up with an iron would have been the prudent play.
She made a double-bogey, or two over par, from there, followed by a bogey at the next hole, and missed the cut by two shots.
“I think I was too aggressive from the tee box,’’ she said. “I saw a leaderboard showing players with 6-under par. I wanted to be on the leaderboard before finishing my second round. I was not worried about making the cut. I will use my 5-wood this year. Or driver.’’
Wie said she learned other lessons from last year’s experience that have helped her overall game.
She began working with a strength trainer over the winter to add muscle and improve her endurance.
“I figured out that I need to gain more distances for all 13 clubs in my bag,’’ she said. “I need to be able to sustain my energy level throughout the tournament week.’’
Wie’s game has shown improvement. Although she has yet to nab her first Ladies Professional Golf Association, or LPGA, Tour win, the teen has two thirds and a fifth-place finish in the year’s first three LPGA major tournaments. She also finished one shot out of a playoff in her first event of the season at the Fields Open in Hawaii.
Heading into this week’s HSBC Women’s World Match Play Championship, she had earned $394,591, good enough to rank 15th on the world’s premier women’s tour.
JDC tournament director Clair Peterson has been rooting for Wie at every stop this year, including Korea, where, he said, her success does not diminish the history she can make in the Quad-Cities this week.
He noted that female golfer Se Ri Pak made a men’s cut in Korea in 2002 and said it is meaningful that no woman has made the cut in a PGA Tour event since Babe Didrickson Zaharias did so twice in 1945.
“The PGA Tour is recognized as the top league in the world,’’ he said. “It carries a different status.’’
As Wie returns to the JDC this week, she will try to remember two great shots she hit last year rather than the fact she fell two shots shy of the cut.
One of those was an opening-round shot she hit around some trees at the difficult ninth hole to turn a bogey into a birdie. The other was a shot she hit Friday within inches of the cup for a birdie on No. 18.
“Both shots gave me a different type of confidence,’’ she said, adding that the Friday shot was most memorable “because it was on one of the most difficult holes on the course and there were thousands of fans cheering for me.
“I could feel the high-voltage energy emanating from the huge gallery on both sides of the 18th green,’’ she added. “It was a great feeling I will keep in my heart forever.’’
Now, she is back for more memories. And ice cream.
Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com.