Sometimes, objects in your rearview mirror may be larger than they appear. In the world of golf, that's just how everyone on the LPGA Tour must be feeling tonight after 13 year old Michelle Wie of Hawaii won the 27th U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship in Florida yesterday. And it wasn't just that she won it, it was how she won it.
Unlike Annika Sorenstam, who in her only appearance in a PGA event used patience and accuracy to stay close to making the cut at Colonial, Wie demonstrated the sort of power and agression the women's tour is just going to have to get used to:
Bashing 300-yard drives across risky doglegs and reaching longish par-4s with half-wedge approach shots, Wie stormed back from a four-hole deficit in the morning round to outlast (Virada) Nirapathpongporn, 21, a rising senior at Duke.
I'm sure some people like to think that Michelle Wie is something special, a once in a lifetime athlete that we may never see again.
And all those folks are wrong. Because Michelle Wie is just the leading edge of a tidal wave that will eventually drive the average age of golfers on the LPGA Tour to levels we see now in Women's Tennis.
Why is this happening? Welcome to the Tiger Woods effect -- because it was his arrival as a dominant golfer that sent a message to millions of young people that they could compete and succeed on a golf course no matter their color, religion, race, or social circumstance.
Now, an abundance of athletic talent that hadn't been filtered into golf before is finally getting a chance to compete. And the results will be nothing less than astonishing.
So why is a girl barely out of her teens on the edge of this massive change? Because, as anybody who has sat through eighth grade health class can tell you, girls develop into women faster than young boys develop into men. For decades, we've known this to be true as teenage women have dominated figure skating, gymnastics, and tennis. It's only now, after Woods has become a true global superstar, that we're seeing the first golfers that he's inspired begin to have an impact on the sport.
And since girls develop physically faster than boys, it's only natural that the real effect on the PGA will be delayed a number of years. But when it comes, God help the folks in the middle of the pack on the tour.
I say those guys have five to seven years on the outside before the next round of "Tiger Clones" comes knocking and looking for the big paychecks. The guys on tour better hit the gym.
