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Michelle Wie, a Woman in Full Bloom

by Jeff Skinner

The two week party at Pinehurst that was the Opens of the USGA came to an exciting and very fitting conclusion yesterday. As Michelle Wie shielded herself from the champagne spray her friends were showering her with I couldn’t help but smile and think what a wonderful story had unfolded over the Sandhills of North Carolina.

Wie had been the poster girl for the LPGA and women’s golf for years but has been surrounded by controversy and criticism for a number of reasons. Much of the criticism was justified for her behavior early in her career and much was the result of unrealized expectations.

When a teenage girl can drive it past the men and nearly win a U.S. Women’s Open at fifteen the expectations follow, whether justified or not.

Wie’s road to Pinehurst has been fraught with missteps, stumbles and emotional trials. Wie and her team had been an easy target for many, including myself. But the young woman we have seen this year is not the girl we saw tee it up on the PGA Tour. Nor is she the one that withdrew from tournaments citing false injuries or whine about rulings that didn’t go her way.

Wie has transformed herself into a confident, self-assured champion that is comfortable with herself and not hesitant to let the world know who she is.

Michelle WieIt had to be difficult to try and grow up in that fishbowl she was trapped in for so many years. Yes, the attention and controversy may have been self-inflicted wounds but can we really hold a sixteen year old responsible for all that went on around her?

The Michelle Wie that hoisted the trophy over head and sat in the press tent and calmly and sincerely exposed the inner Michelle to the press is a woman that has matured on so many levels.

This Michelle Wie was thankful for all the issues she had previously,”I think it just means so much more to me. I think life is just so ironic. I think that without your downs, without the hardships, I don’t think you appreciate the ups as much as you do. I think the fact that I struggled so much, the fact that I kind of went through a hard period of my life, the fact that this trophy is right next to me, it means so much more to me than it ever would have when I was 15. Obviously, I still remember that. I try to drive the first hole. I learned not to do that at the U.S. Open on the first hole. I learned a lot. But I think life is just so ironic like that. I am just so grateful for that, just because of everything I’ve been through. I feel extremely lucky.”

One moment on the course yesterday illustrated the growth in Wie.  After she double bogeyed sixteen and her lead fell to a mere stroke over Stacy Lewis she was smiling and laughing at herself as she walked off the green.  “But, yeah, just tried to laugh it off. It was just, that’s a situation where if you take yourself too seriously, bad things will happen and I think I just kind of just went with the flow of it.”

Go with the flow?  A few years ago she would have self-destructed after an episode like that but now she is mentally stronger and able to control herself so much better.

She is now a woman that knows the pain of failure and the joy of success and how to live with herself when things aren’t perfect,”I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to just really stay in the present and really try not to control everything. I think when, growing up, I was kind of a control freak. I just wanted to control everything. Have the perfect swing. Have the perfect putting stroke. And if something wasn’t perfect, then I would start to freak out. I think over the years I started to learn, notice, that you can’t be perfect. I started to look at other people’s swings. There’s so many different swings that wins golf tournaments. There’s so many different putting strokes. You can’t be perfect all the time. I just decided just to let it go, just to have fun, and just try to get better every day. And I think I’ve learned a lot from that.”

Wie was basking in her win today but still said that she “was grateful for everything I’ve been through” and said maybe she “was supposed to struggle” so better to appreciate the good times.

Well, for this 24 year old the good times are here. This season has been the ultimate for Wie. She has two wins this year, is number one on the LPGA money list, has nine to ten finishes, sits at seventh in the world rankings and has just won her first major championship.

She’s a child of her generation and loves her social media and shares her life with her fans and friends. She’s found a new level of comfort being herself and that’s not an easy thing for a person in the spotlight 24 hours a day.

Watching and listening to Michelle this week has been a joy. She’s a woman in full bloom and after such a long, troubled road it is so heartwarming to see her grow into the mature, gracious woman she has become.

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