Michelle Wie and a tale of two teenagers

Here’s a line from the sports pages of London’s respected Guardian newspaper that deserves a wider audience. “Hamburg were breathing out of their arses and the last thing they needed to see was someone who can catch pigeons coming on.” Translation: the labouring Germans were undone late in last week’s European Champions League football (soccer) game against Arsenal by a fresh substitute with lightning speed.

So what has that got to do with Michelle Wie, you won’t ask because you didn’t know that was the point? Bear with me.

The pigeon-catcher in question is called Theo Walcott, and he is an exciting new talent. But his manager generally prefers to bring him on only for the last 10 or 15 minutes or so of a match, a fresh pair of highly talented legs to turn a game around as he often does.

This has led to a growing clamour to see him play full time, which the boss resists.

The reason? Like Wie, Walcott is a tender 17 years of age and the manager is afraid of throwing him to the sporting wolves too early. Too many of the wrong kind of injuries now and Walcott could be plagued with them for the rest of his career as other young prodigies have been. A run of bad games could also turn the crowd against him as quickly as they first acclaimed him, denting his confidence in a way that might do permanent damage to an impressionable teenager.

I appreciate golf is a long way from the punishing physical demands of football, but I still see parallels that reflect ill on Wie, her parents and her sponsors. It is already being suggested Wie’s attempts to slug it out with the men are seriously affecting her game for the worse. And how many more humiliations like this week’s exit from a meaningless Japanese men’s tournament – last but for an amateur - before her confidence suffers a lasting dent?

You don’t get any prizes for guessing I think the football manager’s approach is better for all concerned. He is certainly not doing it for altruistic reasons: he’s protecting an investment that could be worth just as many squillions as Wie if not more if Walcott realises his full potential.

Everyone keeps saying Wie is a huge talent. At the moment all I see is someone whose career is going embarrassingly backwards. I have no problem with women mixing it with the men if they are up to it. I do have a problem with the constant triumph of hype over reality every time Wie goes near a PGA course.

I wish she would succeed with her tilts at the faintly ludicrous windmill of the cut until it becomes such a non-event we can continue with the serious stuff at the top of the leaderboard. But if it doesn’t happen soon someone should take her, her parents and her sponsors aside and insist she tries a more measured progress towards her goals, before it’s too late.

Lots of things are said to be riding on her success: the wider appeal of the game to an Asian audience, and more particularly to young girls and women. As Tiger Woods found out the other week, there are already enough emerging Asians to perk up interest on that continent, and as for the girls, what lesson are they to draw from repeated failure? Not one the golfing authorities want them to hear I suspect.