WOOD AND WIE: WHO’S RIGHT

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bruced
July 28, 2008

Let’s take a look at the decision by Chris Wood to turn professional and by Michelle Wie to re-enter the destructive world of men’s golf.

Chris Wood, the lanky young Englishman who has just turned pro, missed matching Justin Rose’s extraordinary Amateur feat at the Open Championship by just one place.
Whereas Rose finished 4th in the Open won by Mark O’Meira at Royal Birkdale in July 1968, Wood was 5th at the same course ten years later when Padraig Harrington prevailed for the second successive time.
The transformation from amateur to professional golfer is never easy as Rory McIlroy will attest to.
He started like a house on fire with a 3rd place finish at the Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews in August last year, but hasn’t been able to better that nearly a year later.
Somehow though we believe Wood will strike gold a lot sooner than Rose did – and for a very good reason.
If Rose’s first season in the pro ranks was characterized by an endless series of missed cuts, it was almost certainly because he made the jump at too tender an age.
He was still seventeen when he achieved those heroics at Birkdale and simply wasn’t ready for the hard facts of a pro golfers life when he joined the professionally ranks shortly afterwards.
Wood, who at 6ft 5in, towers above the majority of his rivals, is a much more mature golfer at 20 and after the way he handled the pressure and the composure-wrecking wind that blasted Royal Birkdale all week, he must have every chance of carving out a successful career as a Tour professional.
We back his move and wish him well in his new career.
I’m sorry I can’t say the same for Michelle Wide.
When will she ever learn?
The talent she has wasted in pursuing her obsession with beating the men leaves you breathless.
You literally saw it ebbing away fast as she missed cut after cut in the men’s events where she went from being called a teenage sensation to being a tragic joke.
She is still without a win in any form of professional golf, but guess what?
She does it again just when she is beginning to refind her feet in women’s golf – she was second two weeks ago in the LPGA’s State Farm Classic when she carelessly forgot to sign her card and had herself disqualified.
And this time against the advise of her father, who so many of us previously blamed for commercially exploiting his daughter in her fruitless forays into men’s golf.
Some will say it’s her life to live as she pleases.
What do you think?
And how do you feel about Chris Wood turning professional.
Common, lets hear your views.
Cheers Neville Leck