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You may say we spend an awful lot of time on Michelle Wie. She has only won one LPGA Tournament. But winning has never been a prerequisite for the masses to be enamored with the young woman of Korean heritage from Hawaii. Even before she turned into a 6-foot tall, super-model gorgeous, artistic young lady with a great sense of humor.
Now she has a car deal and an international eatery has hired her to tell the world, “I’m lovin’ it”.
McDonald’s has reached an agreement with Wie to be their pitch woman. Not just in the U.S. If you’ve traveled much, you know there’s a McDonalds in every major city on the planet. Since Wie is bi-lingual, McDonalds wants Wie to be their face in Korea and Japan. I wouldn’t be surprised if they expanded the campaign to European markets.
Earlier this year, on the same day Kia Motor Company announced it’s agreement to be a sponsor of Wie, the automobile company said it was going to sponsor an LPGA event. That’s how the Kia Classic played near San Diego the last weekend in March came about. All of this in what is the thinnest of LPGA schedules in this golf generation’s memory.
You can bet your bottom dollar there were a lot of people in Hawaii very deflated by word that Kia was taking it’s money to California. Everyone expected sponsors to flock to Hawaii to resurrect one of the events formerly played in the Island once Wie won a tournament. Not so much.
But quite frankly, the most powerful thing Michelle Wie did in the past month was very straightforward, seemingly unscripted, interview with Connell Barrett for Golf Magazine. It’s the first time I’ve felt like I was hearing Michelle speak from the heart, since talking with her when she was 11 and won the Jenny K Invitational at the Mid Pacific Country Club.
In the interview, Wie says she doesn’t remember the really bad times. Really doesn’t have a memory of the “dark” times.
For instance, she said doesn’t remember the time she pulled out of one tournament, only to turn up at another, practicing on a forbidden day and drawing the ire of Annika Sorenstam.
When asked what the lowest point was after the difficulties playing on the PGA Tour, she tells Barrett, “I literally do not remember a lot of things.”
Asked about what arguably could be her worst year, 2007, when she broke her wrist, Wie says “There were times when it would have been fine if I didn’t play again. It hurt so much. It was dragging on forever. I felt I would never get better. I would feel that way, and the next day I would want to go at it again.”
About the ‘most’ embarrassing moment, DQ’d from the 2008 State Farm Classic, Wie tells Barrett in Golf Magazine:
“That was a blessing in disguise because I might have gotten an exemption through the money list. Instead, I had to go to Q School. I didn’t want to, but I had to. It built a lot of character getting my LPGA card the hardest way. That way was cool and satisfying.”
Asked if she’ll attempt to compete against the guys on the PGA Tour, she answers: “I realized, OK, I’m not ready for it now – I’ll focus on something else. Will I try again? I don’t worry about the future questions. When I was younger, I spent so much time talking about the future. I want to worry about now, what makes me happy now. Thinking too far in advance about things you can’t control is pointless.”
CONTROL AND TIGER WOODS
Thinking about what he can control seems to be what consumes most of Tiger Woods mental energy. That is if you believe the writers who believe they know.
And if you believe all of the writers in the world of golf, sports, entertainment and business, giving all control to the media and answering each and every question they want to ask is the only way Woods can redeem himself.
One of my hero’s, who just turned 80, is of like mind. That’s pretty much what Arnold Palmer said during an interview before the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard at Bay Hill Club and Lodge.
I disagree. See, I don’t think Tiger needs to say anything else. I don’t think he has to answer any more questions. I don’t want to see any more text messages, which aren’t any more salacious than the hundreds of thousands of "sexting" messages send out every day by law abiding Americans.
I just want to get back to the business of playing golf. And he needs to get back to the business of doing his job and fixing his personal life. His job is playing the best golf possible. That is what I am interested in. His personal life is just that, his personal life. I know you all expect this public person to be accountable to all of you. Sorry. There aren’t any perfect people running around. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses and Woods is definitely discovering the power of Karma in the here and now. Lucky him.
There was a time, in the past 50 plus years, that Presidents of the United States of America not only had a regular mistress, there was one who had a whole stable of mistresses. And the media left them alone to do what they did in private and excel at what they did in pubic.
Since when did the details in the life of a family become the property of the public domain? Because we bought the products he was being paid to endorse? We followed Presidents into wars despite their private lives and the struggles they were burdened with.
COUNTDOWN APRIL 5th
Maybe the media will get it’s chance to ask all of those questions at Augusta National on the Monday of the Masters Tournament.
Tiger Woods has agreed to speak to the media.
As for not preparing to play, in a competitive tournament before the first major of the year, Arnold Palmer says he thinks Tiger Woods is making a big mistake.
But there are those who disagree including some PGA Tour players, including Adam Scott who says he never counts Tiger Woods out
So Kelly Tilghman is being lauded for getting Tiger Woods to open up and say “I wasn’t driving that fast, I just ran into a couple of things.” And ESPN is being honored for asking Woods, ever so politely, “So, excuse me for asking, why did you get married?”
Geez kids, because he thought he could be a good husband and a father, like half of all of the people who walk down the aisle but somehow don’t manage to pull off sticking to their wedding vows.
So he only allowed 5 minutes for the interviews he granted. Do we really have nothing better to think of than Tiger Woods and his sexual problems? Or whether or not Elin Woods is going to divorce her husband.
My son is being deployed for the fourth time, leaving his 6 year old child behind for the 3rd time, with the little guys new mom, cause the first marriage was a casualty of the war.
We, as a country and a people, are fighting two fronts, struggling with huge numbers of unemployed, sidewalks and parks clogged with homeless people living under cardboard boxes and shopping carts, drug addition, malnutrition, poor education by global standards and whopping medical bills but we fixate on the private lives of the celebrity.
Check out the poll in Golfweek. You’re readers/listeners/viewers don’t care to hear any more questions answered. But we’re going to get it anyway.
Yes, Tiger Woods is going to face the pool of reporters allowed into the media room at Augusta National on April 5th. I can’t imagine how many times he’ll invoke the “no comment”, talk about the 12 steps of addiction rehabilitation, how he is making amends to the people he has hurt and getting back to his roots, which includes his religious beliefs, and making his apology again.
It’s all good and well but this is just the first step in a lifetime of change or not.
I’m not hanging my sense of self-righteousness on whether Tiger Woods faces the media. I hope for his sake that he can stick to the program and figure out what’s missing inside that pushes him into such self-destructive behavior. Cause believe it or not, all of the parties and the women, wasn’t really giving him any pleasure. Not the kind that lasts more than 60 seconds.
THE KIA CLASSIC AND ANOTHER RULES BUMP FOR WIE
Michelle Wie was charging. Coming from the middle of the pack, Wie was moving up the leaderboard chasing the leader and ultimate Kia Classic champion Hee Kyung Seo.
But water and yet another rules infraction knocked her down to a T6 and clipped her wings.
She was in a hazard. The ball was halfway in and out of the water. She could have taken a drop and a one-stroke penalty but she went for it.
With one leg in the water and the other on the embankment, Wie struck the ball. The water sprayed like sand but the ball only moved a couple feet. In what looked like resignation that she hadn’t managed to move the ball more, Wie then grounded her club.
http://www.thegolfchannel.com/golf-videos/wie-little-mishap-13849/?ref=26000&rsec=210
You can see the video here from Golf Channel after the commercial.
That means she allowed the club to touch the ground in the hazard. That’s against the rules unless it is necessary to keep your balance. And that is what she later told the rules officials. She told them she needed to put the club down in order to keep her balance.
A shorter person would never have been able to pull off trying to hit the ball out of the water in the first place. And precisely her height is what I believe was her undoing. She didn’t look like she was loosing her balance.
While contesting the ruling Wie told the officials she felt off balance and used the club to get it back,
The rules official said he believed she might have felt off balance but not to the point where she was going to lose her balance, fall over and require the club to catch her.
Therefore the 2-stroke penalty remained.
That meant Wie finished the tournament T6 and not T2. About a 90 thousand dollar difference but for Wie, I believe it was more about what she believed was an injustice. Others say she was just trying to use the rules to her favor by claiming she was off balance.
But who is to say she didn’t feel her foot in the water slide in the mud?
MY STYLE
As soon as I saw Christina Kim this weekend, I started singing “My Kind of Gal”. to the tune of “Chicago, my Kind of Town”. It’s a really old Frank Sinatra song. The song came to mind for two reasons.
SO CLOSE FOR TADD…AND THEN CAME THE FOURTH ROUND
“Tadd Fujikawa is easily one of the most recognizable golfers at any event he enters. Standing just 5'1" and always hosting a smile, the kid from Honolulu seems to stick out with a bit of flair and genuine charisma. On the eGolf Tour, he is finally settling into his own and finding a comfort level amidst players close to his age. With 18 holes to play in the tour's Golf in Morocco Classic, he is close to winning his first tour title.”
That’s how the writer in the communication department on the eGolf Professional Tour describes Tadd Fujikawa.
It was exactly for that reason that we want Fujikawa to win.
It is one of those wonderful feelings on a Saturday in late March when you think the best is going to happen for someone moving up in the world of golf.
Tadd Fujikawa was not just tied for the lead in his fourth outing on the eGolf Professional Tour at the Columbia Country Club and Cobblestone Park Golf Club in Blythewood, South Carolina, he had the outright lead by two strokes going into the final round. But the lead quickly evaporated. Continuing with the eGolf Tour communications writer:
“Frank Adams, who won the Golf in Morocco Classic after struggles of his own, stood on the first tee of the final round at Columbia Country Club trailing phenom Tadd Fujikawa by two shots, but knew there might be an opening. After struggling with his driver in the third round, Fujikawa picked up where he left off when he blocked his opening tee shot roughly 50 yards right of the first fairway, in turn setting the tone for what would be a frustrating final round.
"Tadd was struggling early, but I still bogeyed No. 2, but then thankfully birdied No. 3," said Adams, who came to the watery par-3 fifth trailing Fujikawa by just one shot. "On the fifth, I hit a 9-iron over the water to three feet, and I promise you that is not the easiest shot in the world."
With the tees moved forward and the pin tucked right – think No. 12 on Sunday at The Masters – Adams was the one who lucked out on the sucker pin at No. 5. Fujikawa was not so fortunate.
With a short iron in his hands, Fujikawa's tee shot found the water and led to a triple-bogey six on what should otherwise be a simple hole. The four-shot swing catapulted Adams into the lead and sent Fujikawa spiraling downward towards a final-round 82.”
But not before playing three great rounds of golf.
During the second round on Friday, “starting on the front nine at Cobblestone Park, the 5'1" Hawaii star notched pars on his first four holes before bursting through with an eagle-birdie stretch on Nos. 5 and 6. A bogey at No. 7 would ease his momentum, but a birdie at the watery par-3 11th would offset the earlier mishap and move him back to 3-under on his round.
At the uphill par-4 16th, Fujikawa carded his second bogey of the day to fall back to 2-under, but knew he had a reachable par-5 finishing hole still left on the scorecard. A stout tee shot down the right side of the split fairway left him only 195 yards to the pin on the 570-yard closer, and an approach to 8 feet set up a simple eagle that gave him a second-round 67 and a 36-hole total of 11-under 132. "Yesterday I just played well, I hit the ball well and putted well," Fujikawa said of his opening round at Columbia. "Today wasn't as clean. I made a few mistakes and didn't hit the ball as solidly. Overall I thought I played pretty solid, so hopefully I can keep it going and keep my mistakes to a minimum."
Fujikawa entered the third round with a two-shot lead over Matt McQuillan and Chris Baker. Standing on the first tee at 11-under 132, Fujikawa promptly blocked his opening tee shot to the right and set the tone for what would be a frustrating day with his driver.
“I honestly hit just two fairways – Nos. 3 and 9. I had a bunch of blocks and a bunch of pull hooks," said Fujikawa. "If you're missing it one way all day, it's okay, but I hit a few left and then started playing mind games with myself."
Mind games early on must have been a good thing, as Fujikawa quickly found himself at 3-under on his round after a par-par-eagle-birdie stretch to open his first four holes. A bogey at the par-3 fifth dropped him back to 2-under on his round, where he would eventually make the turn at 34.
The back nine was a bit of a toss up with two birdies and two bogeys after Fujikawa was constantly forced to get creative from the rough and the trees. Nevertheless, he managed to post an inward nine of even-par 36 to finish at 2-under 70, in turn maintaining his two-shot cushion heading into Saturday's final round.”
You know the rest. Fujikawa finished 25th after shooting the 82 on the final day.
This is the fourth eGolf Professional Tour Fujikawa has played in this year. At the advice of his teacher, Sea Island Resort's Todd Anderson, Fujikawa joined the eGolf Tour for 2010 with the hopes of bettering his game through increased tournament experience.
"That's exactly why I decided to play here. It will help me prepare for when I make it on TOUR – well, if I make it on TOUR hopefully," Fujikawa confidently stated before correcting with a laugh. "Getting out here and playing week after week is something I need to learn to do. You learn a lot about your game, yourself, and what you need to improve on. It's good because if you're playing well you can try to keep the momentum going into next week, and hopefully I can do that."
Through four starts in 2010, Fujikawa is four-for-four in cuts made. He is currently 12th on the tour's money list with earnings of $11,660. With his mom Lori on the bag each week, Fujikawa has quickly realized that the vast majority of eGolf Tour players are simply a missed putt here or there away from being on the PGA or Nationwide Tours.
"The players out here are very good and you need to play well to win. You just have to do whatever it takes," said Fujikawa, who pointed at improved ball striking as a need over the next two days. "I just have to hit the ball solidly and keep my putter going. If I stay in the process and keep hitting quality shots I should be okay."
Didn’t work out this time Tadd, but it’s only a matter of time. You looked great for three days.
Hawaii’s Ryan Perez is another Hawaii player opting for the eGolf Professional Tour. Perez started the Golf in Morocco event but didn’t make the cut. This was just his first time out. We’ll be following his progress for you here and on “The Golf Club” radio show.
MAKING HISTORY
Ernie Els designed Hoakalei Golf Course on the Ewa Plain of Oahu in Hawaii. So Hawaii’s Ernie Els has made history. The South African golfer, who has finally recovered from kneed surgery, won twice this past month.
Not only did he win the World Golf Championship – CA at the TPC Blue Monster at Doral in Miami Florida, he won at Bay Hill. I think that’s a first.
Ernie Els won the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard at Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando Florida.
After the third round, already in the lead, Els said he was very happy with his performance
There was a weather delay. Thunderstorms halted play with just a few rounds to go forcing a Monday finish. With Kevin Na tugging at his shirt sleeves, Els pulled off the victory in fine form.
Na came close. He finished at 9-under 279 with a 69 in the final round. He was within one shot of Els with a two-putt birdie from about 50 feet at the par-5 16th. But drove it into the rough on the 18th and made bogey. Edoardo Mollinari shot a final-round 69 for T2 with Na.
SET SCRAMBLE
Get your golf course to register to be a SET Scramble qualifying site or sign up for SET Scramble at Turtle Bay Resort Palmer course or the Pearl Country Club on Oahu or the Prince Golf Course on Kauai.
SET stands for Same Exact Time. It’s a scramble, which means your four-person team will play the best ball of the four hit. But this is where it’s different.
On the tee, two people in the team tee off at the same time. You’re given a little time to get set-up, get your waggles out, and then you hit at the same time. After that, the next two players on the team hit their tee shots. Once the best ball is found, the four of you, standing about driving range distance apart, hit you next shot…all at the same time.
Here’s a video with John Daly and friends before the full show appears on Golf Channel:
http://setscramble.com/movie.html
Another video will show you more detail plus how to enter:
http://www.setscramble.com/
“SHARE THE JOY” DEMO DAY AT KO OLINA
This demo day is for everyone. Are you a beginning golfer or know someone who is? Do you need to find that perfect club to help you get more distance? Maybe you need a club fit for you. Or you want to learn the finer points of chipping onto the green.
That’s what “Share the Joy” demo day at Ko Olina is all about and then some. There will be a Grand Prize drawing, a chipping contest, golf clinics featuring Ko Olina Golf Club’s top PGA Professionals and Get Ready Golf clinics, which are perfect for beginners.
You’ll be able to check out the latest equipment from Cleveland, Cobra, Nike, TaylorMade and Titleist.
And it’s free.
The fun starts at 9 am and lasts until 2 pm. Come, “share the joy” and catch the bug at Ko Olina.
SEE YOU ON THE RADIO
You can always catch “The Golf Club” on line at http://www.radiogolfclub.com/. The show is live PLUS all the shows are “archived”, like a library, and you can listen to past shows any time you want.
And we are on the air on Oahu on “The Jewel” at 99.5 FM Saturday morning from 7am until 8:30am.
On Maui, you can listen on KONI FM, 104.3, on Kauai, KTOH 99.9 FM and in Hilo, on KPUA AM 670.
Prefer a podcast? Pick us up at iTunes.
On your smart phone? Get the StitcherRadio application and listen in.
It’s gonna be a big summer.
Thank you for your Mana, and may you hit the sweet spot every time.
Aloha,
Danielle
