June 6th, 2007
Steve Czaban is the best sports talk-radio guy in America. Or at least the one whose own personal obsessions align most closely with mine. I can’t get enough of him. You can catch his Fox Sports Radio show during morning drive time in many markets or on XM.
He’s been following Michelle Wie’s implosion pretty closely because (a) he’s a golf nerd and (b) he’s a Wie hater. (Aside: If she does manage to salvage her career, Nintendo needs to have Wie Wii Golf, no?)
Czabe has a column up on Wie that’s pretty hot:
Even if you want to believe the convenient “Look At My Wrist, It’s Bandaged!” excuse, it doesn’t explain what a train wreck she was last week. A bum wrist doesn’t explain total ineptitude.
Playing partner Alena Sharp said she thought Wie would withdraw at the turn. “She didn’t look like she was there,” Sharp said. “She didn’t focus like usual.”
Chris Baldwin of Travelgolf.com makes an excellent point: “If your wrist is so hurt that you cannot play two more holes, do you immediately start talking about playing 72 the very next week?”
Robert Thompson of OntGolf.com noted Wie’s cryptic — if not dishonest — answer to a legitimate question at that week’s press conference about the comeback from her injury. When asked when she had recovered sufficiently to resume playing, Wie claimed not to remember. “I don’t really want to go back into the past and talk about the injuries,” she said.
Except when you need that injury to avoid a one-year ban from the LPGA Tour; then, she’ll be happy to tell you all about it.
There hasn’t been an injury this convenient since Al Czervik in the big money match at Bushwood: “Oooh, my arm! I think it’s broken!” . . .
The choice not to dominate junior ranks first, amateur ranks second, college ranks third, the LPGA next and then — only then — take a stab at making a PGA Tour cut is a disastrous decision the full effects of which are just now beginning to be felt.
Great golfers at some point learn to hit the shots that are easy on the range, in the furnace of competition. They learn how to close.
Wie skipped all of that. And there’s no turning back. It would be like building a house with tainted cement, and sub-grade lumber. From the outside, it’ll look like a nice house. But, nothing will be right inside. Nothing.
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