LPGA Queen Michelle Wie

LPGA raising star Michelle Wie in action swing

Friday, April 14, 2006

Michelle Wie Biography

Michelle Wie was born on October 11, 1989, in Honolulu , Hawaii. By the age of four, the young girl of Korean descent had taken up the game of golf. In 2000, Wie became the youngest player ever to qualify for the USGA championship at just ten years old! Two years later, she was a semifinalist in the same event, once again, the youngest player ever to do so.

In 2002 Michelle Wie became the youngest player to qualify for an LPGA event, the Takefuji Classic. In 2003 she scored a 66 at the Kraft Nabisco Championship which tied the record for a women’s major championship. In 2003 she won the Women’s Amateur Public Links in 2003 becoming the, you guessed it, the youngest player ever to win a USGA event for adults.

In 2004 Wie entered the Men’s field, the PGA tour, becoming just the fourth woman (and…youngest ever) to accomplish such a feat. She shot rounds of 72 and 68 at the Sony Open at the Waialee Country Club, making par and missing the cut by just one stroke.

Michelle Wie’s golf accomplishments continue until this day, including receiving a special exemption to the US Women’s Open based on her theoretical position on the money list, being named to the Curtis Cup (the Women’s version of the Ryder Cup), and more. Although being an amateur meant that Wie was unable to earn any money for playing, if she had been pro she would have earned over a quarter million dollars.

Michelle Wie Started 2005 with the best performance of her young career: finishing second at SBS Open at Turtle Bay . In June of the same year, Wie finished second at the LPGA Champion to the then current number one of Women’s golf, Annika Sorenstam. Just a few days later she became the younger player ever to qualify for the USGA national men’s tournament after tying for first place in a 36 qualifying event for the U.S. Amateur Public Links.


A week after the U.S. Women’s Open Michelle Wie attempted for the third time to make the cut at a PGA tour event, the John Deere Classic. Unfortunately she missed the cut by two strokes after consecutive holes of bogey and double bogey but that didn’t stop the tournament’s gross earnings from jumping 40% to 2.8 million and TV viewership jumping a staggering 54% from the year before.

Already, the 6’1 golfstriss can hit the ball over 300 yards with her best drive being 391 yards. In 2005 she announced she would turn pro on October 11 th: her 16 th birthday. The announcement earned Michelle Wie an estimated $10 million in endorsements largely from Nike and Sony making her the high paid woman’s golfer and next to her is Annika Sorenstam who earns about $8 million a year.

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