Newsmakers 2007: Michelle Wie

[#image: /photos/55ad9c65b01eefe207f7deb5]||||||Michelle Wie is not the first high school student to take a slide on senior year, coasting her way into college. But the hard-hitting Hawaiian slacked off not in the classroom but on the golf course, beginning in January with a missed cut by 14 strokes in the Sony Open on the PGA Tour and ending with a next-to-last finish at the LPGA's Samsung World Championship just weeks into her freshman year at Stanford. The 2007 season was a tumultuous one for Wie marked by injury, 88-gate, withdrawals and another agent jumping ship. Already playing with a cranky right wrist, Wie tripped while running soon after the Sony and injured her left wrist. She made an inauspicious return at the Ginn Tribute in May where, after playing 16 holes of the first round in 14 over par, she had a chat with her agent, Greg Nared (above left), then said she was too injured to play the final two holes. Suspicions that she withdrew to avoid disqualification for the year if she failed to break 88 as a non-tour member heightened when she showed up two days later practicing at Bulle Rock, site of the McDonald's LPGA Championship, the next tournament. The situation intensified when Annika Sorenstam, the host of the Ginn event, called Wie's actions there disrespectful and classless. Wie said she had nothing to apologize for. Wie entered eight LPGA events in '07, missing three cuts, withdrawing twice and playing 367 holes in 110 over par. She pulled out of the John Deere Classic in July, citing injury, and didn't play against the men after the Sony in January. In October Nared quit, just as Ross Berlin had a year earlier. "The only thing I did wrong this year is that I did not take my injuries as seriously as I should have," Wie said at the Samsung. "I should just have not played. It was as simple as that." That's a point many critics were making throughout the year.

Newsmakers 2007: Michelle Wie

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