Question of the Month: Hello, world, I am ... Tiger Woods or Michelle Wie
OK, so Michelle Wie is reportedly turning pro this week before her 16th birthday, having secured $10 million endorsements from Nike and Sony, making her the highest paid female golfer. (Story here). This month's question:
When their golf careers are over, who will have become the bigger name around the world -- Tiger Woods or Michelle Wie?
10 Comments:
Wie will. She's got the ability to cross over to the men's. That's bigger than anything Woods can ever do.
I had a chance to see Michelle Wie "up close and personal" for two days in June, 2004 when she was trying to qualify for the USGA's Men's Publinx tournament. Michelle Wie is a fantastic talent, male or female. But she is a female, and when it is all said and done the very fact that she is a female will be what will keep her from being "bigger" than Tiger. In sports there is an old saying, "Good big will always beat good little." Let's paraphrase that to "Good male will always beat good female." Michelle Wie has been managed wery well. She will win many LPGA tournaments, but so will many of the rising young LPGA players. Wie may be competive (top ten)in some second-tier PGA events when she matures as a golfer, but she will never be in the picture when the best male players in the world are in the field for majors and top-tier PGA events. It's how often a player wins that determines his/her greatness. The way her career is being managed she might become one of the most famous athletes of all time, but not because of her victories. I'm afraid Miss Wie will become a victim on the "Anna Kournakova syndrome"--it's not important to be the very best, but it is important to be very marketable!
South Koreans are dominating LPGA.
Why?
I'm not sure whether Miclelle Wie play this game or not, also I'm not sure Miclelle is Korean or not(it's a little bit complicated issue), a lot of South Koreans play this 3D Online Golf game, Shot-Online which was developed by South Korean Company.
http://www.shot-online.com
Maybe hidden secret of South Korean's golfing is "concetration". Korean golfers usually pratice to concentrate something by playing this type of game when they are not golfing.
Check this out.
The key part to this questions is "after their careers are over." If Tiger Woods ends up breaking Jack's record for majors, there is no way Michele Wie will be bigger. The reason for this is that it will then be Tiger's record that everyone will be chasing for the next 50 years. The only way Michele Wie can compete with that is if she won repeatedly on the men's tour and made it into majors. I simply don't think this will happen. I think she will make cuts on Tour, but will never win. She will not be able to shoot low enough consistently to do so. Once she makes a few cuts, that will become yesterday's news as well. In the meantime, Tiger will be trumpeted as the greatest golfer of ALL TIME. That's pretty hard to compete with.
(For the record, I think Michele Wie is something special!)
It's too early to say what impact Wiesy will have on the golf landscape BECAUSE SHE HASN"T ACCOMPLISHED MUCH YET!! Until she can prove she can finish out a tournament and get a win at the professional level, she is the most overpaid athlete in history.
An easy question to answer, but first we have to look at the facts. Has there ever been a female athlete who has become one of the top 10 most recognizable athletes around the world based on their talent? One might argue Babe Zaharias in her day, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Mia Hamm (for a short stint during the olympics), Serena Williams, Marion Jones, and Annika. But they were never on the same tier as Ali, Jordan, and the most recognizable athlete today, Tiger.
So then you have to consider what Wie would have to accomplish to have a bigger name than Tiger at the end of their careers. Lets assume that Tiger blows out both knees this weekend, and his career stands as it is now. Annika hasn't been able to overshadow Tiger with her accomplishments, so it is safe to assume that Wie's accomplishments on the LPGA will not get her to that level (Outside of winning every tournament in a year...or perhaps every tournament she enters for the remainder of her career, and even that may not get her to Tiger's level. Thus the bias towards men's sports). So, she would have to become a success on the men's tour. That includes winning at least one tournament a year, and providing something incredible such as winning a men's major, getting to the top 5 in earnings in a year, or making the cut in almost every tournament she enters. It's not going to happen.
Thus to become a bigger name, it would have to be on marketablity, not accomplishments, and there is no other athlete active today that has reached the marketability of Tiger. Her only chance is for Tiger to do something so horrible that his entire career will be tainted, but with the people he pays to make sure this doesn't happen, this is not likely.
Easy answer...Wie will never reach the level of Tiger in name recognition, but it would never hurt to have this as your lifetime goal.
First of all I agree with almost all of what Power Fade has to say. Now nobody can predict the future so there is no way to know today what may happen in the future but here is how I see things…. The biggest of sports stars are almost always male. Now the reason for that is the public is not as interested in the best FEMALE basketball player or Asian soccer player or European golfer, as they are interested in the best player period. That is why Michael Jordan and Pele and Tiger and Jack and Arnie are the names and faces we recognize because they were and are the best ever and not the best female or Asian or Brazilian at what they do.
For Michelle Wie to eclipse Tiger Woods, she will need to do at least as well as Tiger in two areas, golf performance and personality. Unfortunately for her, I think she is going to come up short in both.
Do I think Michelle Wie will be a regular face on the PGA tour, probably not. I think she will play some tournaments but if she routinely misses cuts and then if she does not eventually start placing reasonably high, the public and the media are going to tire of the story. There is only so many times that the public is willing to watch a young female attempt to make a cut on the PGA tour or finish T42 before they will move on to the next big thing whatever that may be. Do I think she will win a lot of LPGA tournaments, sure but not as many as she probably could or should win. We need to remember that right now in the win section of her resume, outside of local Hawaiian events, she has 1 win, the 2003 Woman’s Pub Links and that is it. Not the Women’s Am or Jr. Am but the Pub Links. Sure she did not play that many Am events but since then, of the 4 she played after her one win, she had a runner up in the 2004 Women’s Pub Links and 3 results that have to be considered disappointing. Now I am not mentioning these facts as a put down but when you think of someone like Tiger or Jordan, you think of winning, performing when it counts, coming through in the clutch. There was a recent news article where it was mentioned that in the JDC, when Michelle was inside the cut line with something like 4 holes to play, she noticed she was a shot or two behind a player who had make negative comments about her so she wanted to catch him on the leader board and ended up making a double and missing the cut. That does not strike me as something Tiger would do. Somehow he always seems to come through when he needs it. So far Michelle has not shown she has that same extra gear or burning inner desire to get the job done.
The other factor is personality. I think it’s too early to say for sure but I do not see the same extroverted light up the room type personality from her that I see from those who are mega stars. When I watch interviews of her, I almost feel that she is too shy and quiet and wish she would speak up and be more expressive. I just do not see her as someone who is going to do great commercials like those Tiger has done, some of which are all time classics. In fact when it comes to personalities, I think there are a number of LPGA players whose personalities are better suited for commercial endorsements, Sorenstam, Creamer and Christina Kim all seem to be much more extroverted.
I do think Michelle Wie could be HUGE in Asia. From what I hear, women’s golf in Asia surpasses men’s golf in popularity. That could be her niche audience and that may well be worth the many, many millions to Sony and Nike and whomever.
I do have to ask one question though… almost every article I read about Michelle Wie talks about how she hits 300 yard drives. Wikipedia says she averages 280. I started looking at the driving statistics for this last year for the tournaments she entered and for the few where stats were available and I have yet to see where she has an official drive over 270 yards. In the 2005 US Open here longest drive was 268, her driving average was 250.9 which were T36 and 5th amongst the amateurs. Here 2 measured drives @ the 2005 Sony were 255.5 and 265.5, I could not find any drive distances for the JDC but the PGA stats list her 2005 average as 266. Clearly I am looking at a very small sample set but for 10 measured drives, I am getting an average of 252.9 which would put her 39th on this years LPGA driving distance list. What am I missing?
So I guess my answer is when their careers are over, I think Tiger Woods will be the bigger name around the world. Of course I could be wrong and that is why I am planning on watching for the next 20 or 30 years.
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