"What Other Options Do We Have?"

That was the stark quote offered by the "Worst Golf Dad In History" B.J. Wie after his daughter slapped her way out of the US Open with an 81-75 trunk slammer of a weekend in Minnesota. He was asked about whether the somewhat embarrassing option of Michelle actually EARNING the LPGA Tour card she once scoffed at by way of.... gasp! ... qualifying for it, was on the table.

"What other options do we have," asked Marv Marinovich Wie?

What options? How about we start, with YOU dropping out of the picture, pops?

You have already done enough to screw up this golfing prodigy. So stop digging. Imagine this. If Michelle Wie goes on to win 10 LPGA events, and 1 major, that would be a great career, right?

Wrong.

YOU have set expectations so absurdly high, that the kid will never, ever, ever live up to them. Nice burden to put on her. And don't say "it was all Michelle's desire to play vs. the men." I don't by that crap. You needed to gently refocus her early on. Not to kill her dream of someday playing the PGA Tour, but to put it at the END of the line after winning early and often against her level of golfer.

Now, Michelle Wie is just another 18-21 year old LPGA (almost) player, who's not that great.

Worse yet, is her delusional assessment every time she gets bounced from a tournament about her play, and the seeming lack of joy with which she plays the game. Here's a key excerpt from an AP story about her future.

"It doesn't feel like I played that bad," Wie said after scrambling for a par on No. 9 from about the same position where she made her quintuple bogey on Thursday. "I'll just take this as a bad week and go from there."

When all the tees were gone, she walked up the hill with her head down, the brim of her cap hiding her eyes. Then it was off to the practice range, her mother bringing over a large bucket of balls.

The AP story continues to accept the absurd excuse of her wrist injury, some 18 months after it occurred.

The wrist injuries that made a wreck of her 2007 season have just about healed. Wie showed no sign of pain for two days at Interlachen, and any questions about her power might have been answered on the 17th hole. With the tees moved up to make it play 405 yards, Wie smashed a driver over the bunkers and had a 52-degree sand wedge left to the green.

COMMENT: Okay, nice drive. I'm guessing she had 100 yard left, meaning she popped it 305. Impressive? Not necessarily. Check out all of the 300 plus bombs the ladies were uncorking at hard and fast Interlachen this week.

Then like clockwork, the AP style book instructs the writer to always make it sound like something "happened" to Michelle Wie, rather than the fact she's just not that good.

For someone whose psyche was so fragile last year, confidence is slowly being restored. Even after opening with an 81, she was 1 under for the second round until the storms rolled in Friday afternoon and stopped her momentum.

COMMENT: Ah yes. She was H-O-T! One under par! My goodness! Cool her down! And then the damned rain came and "stopped her momentum." Right. Just like repeated pepperoni pizzas "stopped my momentum" toward becoming an underwear model.

One final thought on the whole "wrist" thing. I love it when a little factoid is buried in a Michelle Wie story that completely GUTS whatever excuse is in vogue that week to describe her sorry game. Here, it is this little tidbit about Karrie Webb.

Karrie Webb won the Women's British Open in 1995 at age 20, came to America and earned her card at Q-school despite playing with a broken bone in her hand. She now is in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Hmmm. Broken bone. Musta hurt. Wonder if she used it as an excuse?