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Michelle Wie West’s Full-Circle Moment
Michelle Wie West’s Full-Circle Moment
When young athletes accomplish something amazing and are quickly plucked from their local community and plopped onto the world stage, the expectations are understandably enormous.
When young athletes accomplish something amazing and are quickly plucked from their local community and plopped onto the world stage, the expectations are understandably enormous. How could they not be?
Here’s an example. A 10-year-old girl from Hawaii qualifies for the 2000 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links and then shoots 74-76 to advance to match play. She makes it to the third round the next year, then the semifinals the next, until she knocks out all adversaries to win the darn thing in 2003 and become the youngest champion in the history of the USGA at age 13.
Oh, and just a month earlier, she took advantage of a sponsor exemption and shot 66 on moving day at the LPGA Tour’s Kraft Nabisco Championship to move into the final group of the day on Sunday. In a major championship. At 13 years old. When her eighth grade classmates were on spring break. Wow!
Seven months later, she shot a second-round 68 at the Sony Open. On the PGA Tour. Double wow!
And although she missed the cut by a shot, she beat some big names that week: Scott Hoch, Craig Stadler, Adam Scott, John Cook, and Zach Johnson. And many more.
So by the time she became a teenager, it’s natural that the expectations for Michelle Wie West were wild. As previously posed, how could they not be after all she’d done at such a young age?
But all too often a player, no matter the skill, no matter the sport, heck no matter the profession (child actors?), the dramatic rise levels off. For whatever reason, it just does. For all but a very, very, very select few anyway.
But Wie West was still on her ascent at this point in time. She turned pro in the fall of 2005 at age 16, and had a strong rookie season in 2006, recording three top-five finishes in major championships. Three!
And then came a bit of a backtrack. Wie West struggled to keep the momentum she’d built as a rising star through 2008.
Then, she won the limited-field Lorena Ochoa Invitational in 2009, and she won again at the Canadian Women’s Open in 2010 before various long-term injuries led to another slide.
But Wie West is a fighter and she climbed back to the top in emphatic fashion at the start of 2014 with a T2 at the first major of the season at the Chevron Championship (nee Kraft Nabisco) down in Houston, followed by a win two weeks later at the LOTTE Championship, then four top-10s in a five-week stretch before a dramatic culmination and crowning achievement at the U.S. Women’s Open at the famed Pinehurst No. 2.
Wie West was a major champion, 14 lightspeed years after teeing it up in her first big event at 10 years old. And while she only won once more, at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in 2018, she has undoubtedly won in life. Apologies if that sounds cheesy, but watch and listen as she talks about her family and her position in the game and it’s easy to see it’s true.
Wie West gained major sponsorships after turning professional, most notably from Nike and Sony, conducted herself with grace and poise at all times while representing those worldwide brands, and was inarguably worth every penny. She did things the right way, even when skeptics squawked about her playing in too many men’s events, and naysayers knocked her for failing to meet expectations on the golf course.
Wie West didn’t win 10 majors or 20 tour events. Those are facts. But she served as a wonderful ambassador for the game of golf throughout her career. And even after she married Jonnie West, son of NBA legend Jerry West, in 2019 and became a mother in 2020, Wie West recognized that while her full-time playing career had more or less come to a close, she could still use her clout and charisma to continue to advance the game.
She joined Mizuho, a powerful worldwide financial institution, to spearhead a new LPGA Tour event in 2023 that features LPGA Tour players and the AJGA’s best competing simultaneously for separate trophies.
“The genesis of this event really came from my history of being a junior golfer and kind of my trajectory,” she said. “We wanted to create a space for juniors to experience being a pro for one week, playing with the best of the best, having the juniors compare their golf game to the pros that they’re playing with on the weekend.”
Add in an iconic venue in Liberty National Golf Club with jaw-dropping views of both the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline and success was sure to come. And it did.
Decorated amateur player Rose Zhang won the inaugural event in her professional debut, in a sudden-death playoff no less. Yana Wilson, the 2022 U.S. Girls’ Junior champ, won the AJGA event that first year. Wilson, an LPGA Tour rookie in 2026, will be in this year’s field.
Nelly Korda followed Zhang in 2024, and Gianna Clemente, another talented and decorated junior, won the AJGA amateur event. Atthaya Thitikul took last year’s Mizuho Americas Open win and turned it into a trifecta of season-ending awards: player of the year, leading money winner and Vare Trophy champ for lowest scoring average.
Wie West, who has served as tournament host each year, made the first of what are sure to be many headlines surrounding the event Tuesday when she revealed that she has accepted a sponsor exemption to compete this year and serve as playing host.
“One of the privileges that comes with being the host of the Mizuho Americas Open is that I, along with Mizuho and the tournament team, review the potential golfers that could fulfill our sponsor exemptions that we add to our field,” said Wie West.
“When I was presented with the idea for me to play, I couldn’t think of a better time to return to the course and compete with the world’s best golfers, as well as have the opportunity to play alongside the top AJGA (American Junior Golf Association) girls.”
Wie West will also compete in this year’s U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera Country Club.
The Mizuho Americas Open is scheduled for May 7-10 at Mountain Ridge Country Club in West Caldwell, N.J., roughly 20 miles west of New York City. The historic club features a dramatic Donald-Ross designed golf course highlighted by expansive, intriguing greens and a great mix of short and long holes. Mountain Ridge C.C. will host the tournament again in 2027 before the event heads back to Liberty National G.C. in 2028.
Tickets are available at www.
The first three rounds of the Mizuho Americas Open will be featured on Golf Channel and the final round will be televised on CBS. More information is available at MizuhoAmericasOpen.
The Mizuho Americas Open is a purpose-driven tournament on the LPGA Tour. As title sponsor, Mizuho Americas created and drove the vision for a distinctive and premium event that celebrates women and advances the next generation, with a charitable focus on providing leadership and life skills to young girls from low-income communities.
“I think it’s really inspiring to be around other women who are driven, who work hard … it’s one thing to watch your idols on T.V., it’s another thing to watch them in person, but it’s a whole other thing to be inside the ropes with them, competing alongside them. From the young ladies who come to the [Mizuho] DrivHer Summit, there’s a lot of talk about leadership, taking control of what you can do, putting in the work. We talk a lot about work ethic and believing in yourself, networking, asking the right questions, and this is why the mentorship program is so special this week for the juniors and the pros. We want to make that connection.”
“We just really want this week to be a week of mentorship,” Wie West later added. “a week where juniors really throw themselves into the process and just learn a lot. I want them to soak as much up as they can over the week.”
