Letting loose

They say the prestigious Harton S. Semple Trophy weighs about 10 pounds.

When it isn’t filled to its gleaming brim with beer, that is.

The trophy that is toted by a white-gloved custodian before being handed over to the winner of the U.S. Women’s Open found another use Sunday night. With top removed, it was turned into a giant celebratory stein by Michelle Wie and friends in late-night festivities to mark her breakthrough first LPGA major championship.

Good for her.

For however many hours the Instagram post lasted until being taken down Monday, it was the most public glimpse yet of Wie as we feared we might never see her — a joyous, free-spirited 24-year-old.

It was reminiscent of scenes of Stanley Cup revelry — and who ever imagined we’d witness that from Wie?

She did her version of a hula on the course at Ko Olina after winning the Lotte Championship two months ago, but what took place at Pinehurst, N.C., was the kind of unscripted hijinks seldom exhibited. The spontaneity was the most visible sign yet that she has been freed from the cocoon that had long enveloped her.

For most of her eight-plus years as a professional, she was so well packaged and carefully wrapped that it was hard to really know what was real and what was contrived. Who knew which words were hers and which ones were planted by an agency in Los Angeles or Chicago?

After completing a round at the Sony Open in Hawaii and emerging from the scorer’s trailer, she would be set upon by a retinue of advisers like a NASCAR pit crew. They would prep her on what to say and how to look, right down to smoothing out any creases in her sponsors’ logos. And this was before she had won anything.

While she battled the considerable weight of expectation of being a can’t-miss prodigy, it was also apparent that she sometimes struggled just to breathe amid all the minders and hovering parents.

Which was too bad, because when Wie was allowed to be herself, she could be bright, refreshing and engaging with a magnetism that appealed widely to kids and adults alike.

But, too often, especially as her on-course frustrations mounted and injuries slowed her, the body language spoke of drudgery and she retreated behind the mask of impassivity.

Only after her graduation from Stanford in 2012 was she apparently able to begin making more of her own calls. It wasn’t until the 2014 LPGA opener in the Bahamas, reports noted, that she was traveling by herself to an LPGA Tournament.

"Sometimes, she rebels," her swing coach, David Ledbetter, told GolfChannel.com in February. "She’s a young woman now, and she has demanded more freedom."

It could hardly have been coincidence that that was when her game showed signs of really coming together again.

It was not overlooked that when Wie drank from the trophy Sunday, she did so in a stance that resembled her much-criticized putting posture and threw in some twerking. Somewhere, Johnny Manziel was smiling.

By winning the U.S. Open and emerging atop the tour’s money list and several statistical categories, Wie’s time to be the face of the LPGA may have finally arrived.

How refreshing that it is now revealed to contain, on occasion, a mischievous smile.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.