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When she was a child, Michelle Wie West spoke softly and astonishingly swung a big golf stick.
Today, as the 32-year-old recently retired mother of a 2-year-old, she speaks confidently, with wisdom and commitment, comfortable carrying the weight of the world.
Figuratively, Title IX might have had nothing to do with the indelible impact Wie has had on golf and women’s sports. She didn’t play on the Punahou team or at Stanford, where she graduated in 41⁄2 years despite attending part-time and competing nearly full-time on the LPGA Tour.
Literally, what she accomplished as a child was life-altering for a generation in Hawaii and around the world. Wie opened so many eyes to what was possible, if only everyone was given a fair shot.
Which is what the now 50-year-old Title IX — the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act — is all about.
“Its (Title IX’s) biggest impact on Michelle was that it really brought to light globally that we all could see the inequity that was there,” says Maui’s Mark Rolfing, an NBC and Golf Channel broadcaster who has known Wie most of her celebrated life. “No one was talking about it or even cared about it 50 years ago. Michelle so raised the awareness level.”
That will not end with her golf career, which she announced was over before this year’s U.S. Women’s Open — the major she won in 2014.
When Wie said she was leaving the game, she spoke mostly of her commitment now to “help golf become a more diverse and inclusive space.”
She has already had an immense impact in that area, though she might not have known it when her face first became famous at 10 years old. Coached by Casey Nakama at Olomana Golf Links, and already a bit infamous for pickup games with strangers at Ala Wai Municipal, she became the youngest to qualify for a U.S. Golf Association open event in 2000.
Her young life became a blur. Beyond success in Hawaii State Junior Golf, Wie started winning women’s events in Hawaii, qualified for an LPGA tournament at 12 and won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links and grabbed a top-10 at an LPGA major at 13.
In the midst of all this, her father, BJ, a transportation management professor at the University of Hawaii, began having her compete against men.
“Honestly speaking, I did not know anything about Title IX when she started playing golf,” BJ says. “I think she just enjoyed playing golf with other girls at OJGA and HSJGA tournaments. After she won numerous girls and women’s tournaments in Hawaii, she started competing with boys and men and realized she could improve her golf in a more accelerated mode.”
She would have shocking success, reaching the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur Public Links — an open event that had never had a woman compete before. And, oh yeah, she was 15.
A year later, as she closed in on a driver’s license, Wie won Hawaii’s U.S. Open local qualifier and became the first girl or woman in a Sectional qualifier. She was eighth after the morning round and 2 under after 30 holes, holding a New Jersey crowd of 6,000-plus fans and media in disbelief. Officials had closed the gates at 11 a.m. because it was the only way to control her followers.
“She might freaking do this,” a national writer following her said, holding his head in shock.
Wie would fall five short of becoming the first female qualifier in the U.S. Open.
“I’m not really here to prove that women can actually play,” she said that day. “I’d like to motivate people to do what they want to do and not just do what other people do, the normal thing. I hope people can break out of the normal thing.”
She headed to Camden Yards to throw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game and woke up the next morning at the McDonald’s LPGA Championship, where she was second the year before.
Her reaction to it all was similar to the way she described her first memory of the game, which was watching The Masters as a very young child.
“I never really realized it was only for men,” Wie said.
That sentence was even more memorable in 2004, when Wie received an exemption to play the PGA Tour’s Sony Open in Hawaii. Waialae Country Club became the center of the golf world when she missed the cut by one, as TV ratings soared and Hawaii fans climbed trees to watch. She led the field in distance of putts made and had three drives over 300 yards.
“I think I played really great today,” Wie said after her second-round 68. “Just one more shot and I would have made it. It’s killing me now.”
Wie caught everyone’s attention that week — from the pros to tiny girls and boys of all ethnicities around the globe — and held it. She would go on to play 14 men’s tour events (eight on the PGA Tour), attracting huge crowds at every stop and making the cut at a 2006 Asian Tour event in South Korea.
Her LPGA career, stifled by injuries, never quite captured the same imagination, but it was immensely successful, and the wins in Hawaii and at the U.S. Women’s Open were especially sweet.
“It was not a perfect career. I definitely made a lot of mistakes,” Wie says, “but that’s just how it is.
“My mistakes and injuries helped create my career. It led to good and bad moments. I’d love to have gotten rid of all the injuries, but it is what it is and it made me who I am. I have no regrets. There is no point in it.”
And her impact on the game and the way girls and people of color saw themselves would never change. Wie’s focus now is all about that, and her daughter, Makenna Kamalei Yoona West, who turned 2 in June.
The family celebrated it with Golden State’s’ fourth NBA championship in eight years. Husband/dad Jonnie West is the Warriors’ director of basketball operations and actively involved in encouraging Wie to “help golf become a more diverse and inclusive space.”
“We went to the (Warriors’) parade, which was amazing,” Wie recalls of the family’s joyful June. “Makenna waved at people and threw confetti, which she really enjoyed.”
Makenna has also encouraged her mom, in her own way. Part of how Wie wants to make the game more diverse and inclusive is to make it “cooler” for younger people and more accessible for everyone.
She is on the LPGA board of directors and the tour’s Diversity Link insists it is “committed to change the face of golf.”
One of Wie’s first projects last year was #HoodieForGolf. She designed a bright pink and blue tie-dye hoodie to raise money for the Renee Powell Fund, which provides grants to LPGA-USGA Girls Golf programs in Black communities and Clearview Legacy Foundation. Powell was the second Black player on the LPGA Tour. Clearview Golf Club is the only course designed, built, owned and operated by an African-American — Powell’s father, Bill.
A few Warriors wore the hoodie, and three hours after a picture of them went viral the sweatshirts sold out. Now, more than $350,000 has been raised by their sales.
Wie was just getting started. Now she has the time, and “a great nanny, a total lifesaver” to help with Makenna.
“I want to be remembered for making this tour, and the landscape for female athletes, better than how I found it,” Wie told Golf Magazine earlier this year. “It’s something I’ve always strived for since I got on tour, living up to the 13 founders and honoring them and everything they did with this tour for us. Hopefully I can do the same for the future generations.”
Her ideas and goals come from feelings she says were ingrained in her growing up in Hawaii. Once she started traveling to the mainland for golf she saw how different it was from her home’s unique diversity. Then she began noticing how many people had so little access to the game, and how much they were missing.
“All that, combined with my love for the game, makes me want to introduce it to many more people,” Wie says. “Golf is not just for the sport and to have fun, but it’s also a really great business tool.
“Getting more girls of color into golf and letting them have access to the game not only helps them in the sport, but it’s also a great business tool to carry on for the rest of their lives. It opens a lot of doors for them and gets them in the conversation. It is really helpful.”
It’s opened doors all over the world for Wie. She turned pro a few days before her 16th birthday with $20 million in endorsement deals from Nike and Sony.
Many, many more would follow. She brought immense interest, and much more money, to the LPGA and women’s sports. There were cover profiles in the New York Times, Golf World, USA Today and ESPN The Magazine, and feature stories in Sports Illustrated and People.
One golf writer said, “The world became her Cheers, where everyone knows her name. Fans show up or turn on the TV because of her.”
Rolfing encourages Wie to continue her fledgling broadcasting career, not only because “she is such a natural at it,” but because it would help her remain relevant in the game and amplify her now-articulate voice.
“I think Michelle probably impacted golf in Hawaii and from a global perspective as much as any person in history,” he says. “I can’t think of another person who has had as great an impact.
“For somebody from Hawaii, going through our programs to win the U.S. Open is remarkable. It really proved that the model HSJGA provided, which was primarily a competitive model but also a model of learning how to become a good person and be able to deal with all Michelle has had to deal with, I think she learned lot about that.”
He characterizes her as “grounded” now, happy with her life and the future she is just beginning to form. She has lots of help, from family and the many friends she has made to endorsements and partnerships that just keep coming.
In her “retirement year,” she extended her partnership with Nike another five years. Wie will work as an athlete collaborator in the design process and join Serena Williams and other female athletes in Nike’s Think Tank “to help break down the barriers in women’s sport.”
She also works with Omega, MGM, Pitchbook, Sportbox.ai, Tonal, Blueland and Supergoop sunscreen. The constant stream of endorsements remind her what more is possible for everyone, if equity and accessibility become reality.
In January, Wie became an investor, board member and brand ambassador with LA Golf, an equipment manufacturer “designed to provide female players with benefits in line with their male counterparts, most notably full health care with mental health days.”
“Michelle is one of the greatest women’s players of all time,” LA Golf Chief Executive Reed Dickens said in a statement, “and after 20 years as a professional, she is also one of the most influential voices in the game, so we are thrilled to have her as a partner.”
She is thrilled to finally have time to pursue the interests that have become such a huge part of her new life. She now talks often of the corporate landscape and “companies prioritizing female golfers.”
“It’s important for the longest-running women’s sports organization to continue to exist and thrive and have corporate buy-in,” Wie says, citing health care provider ProMedica’s commitment as this year’s U.S. Women’s Open presenting partner as “amazing.” Its support nearly doubled the tour-best total purse to $10 million.
Now, Big Wiesy is searching out more of the same, for a tour that competes for less than a quarter of what the PGA Tour plays for.
“The tour is doing an amazing job of getting bigger and stronger every year,” Wie says. “It’s really important for a female sports organization to keep running and changing and getting bigger, because girls need a place to play in the future. We need to be a destination where girls that want to can continue playing professionally.
“It’s important for the long running women’s sports organizations to continue to exist and thrive and have corporate buy-in.”
And what does she think about Title IX and her connection to it, in Hawaii and the game of golf?
“I am really proud to be from Hawaii,” Wie says simply. “I’m just hoping what people learn most from my career is not to be afraid to be different and choose your own path. I felt that the biggest thing about my career is I didn’t do anything by the norm. I got a lot of hate and naysayers about it, but what I respect most about myself is I was not afraid to do things differently. I hope girls look at my career and realize it is OK to make mistakes and try new things and be different.”
MICHELLE WIE WEST
Education
>> Punahou 2007
>> Stanford 2012 (communications)
Highlights
>> Five LPGA victories, including the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open, two months after winning the LPGA Lotte Championship in Hawaii
>> Career earnings of more than $6.8 million, with 59 top-10s
>> Played on five Solheim Cup teams (2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017) and was assistant captain in 2021
>> Currently on LPGA board of directors, is an athlete collaborator for Nike and is also part of its Athlete Think Tank, and is an investor, board member and brand ambassador for LA Golf
First …
>> female and youngest (11) to qualify for match play at the 93rd Manoa Cup in 2001. A year later would become first female and youngest (12) to advance to second round.
>> female to shoot in the 60s in a PGA Tour event (2-under-par 68 in 2004 Sony Open in Hawaii, at 14)
>> female to qualify for adult male USGA championship when she tied for first at the 2005 USGA Amateur Public Links Sectional Qualifier
>> amateur to compete in LPGA Championship (2005, at 15). Finished second to Annika Sorenstam.
>> female to win a “men’s” U.S. Open local qualifier, in 2006 at Turtle Bay
>> female and youngest in 2006 U.S. Open New Jersey sectional qualifier, shooting 68-75 and failing to advance
Youngest to …
>> qualify for USGA event (2000, at 10)
>> win Jennie K. Invitational and Hawaii State Women’s Stroke Play Championship (2001, at 11)
>> qualify for LPGA event (2002 LPGA Takefuji Classic, at 12)
>> advance to Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship semifinal (2002, at 12)
>> make cut and finish top 10 (T9) at an LPGA event (2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship, at 13). Tied tournament record for lowest round by an amateur (66, 6 under par).
>> win adult USGA event, the 2003 Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, at 13
>> make cut at U.S. Women’s Open (2003, at 13). Would end year making five of six LPGA cuts.
>> win Hawaii State Open Women’s Division, by 13 shots (2003, at 13)
>> play in PGA Tour event (2004 Sony Open in Hawai’i, at 14). Also finished top 20 in six of seven LPGA starts that year.
>> advance to quarterfinals, at 77th U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship (2005, at 15). Lost to eventual champion Clay Ogden.
June 23, 2022, marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX. To commemorate this watershed event, the Star-Advertiser will publish a series of stories celebrating the achievements of female pioneers and leaders with Hawaii ties.
Click here to view the Title IX series.
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