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Michelle Wie Will Rock You

Golf's 16-year-old phenom is on the verge: of womanhood, of a pro career (against the guys), and of a marketing
whirlwind that will change her life. But she's got to sink those putts.

By KATRINA BROOKER
October 17, 2005

(FORTUNE Magazine) – "I will miss these days," BJ Wie says, watching his daughter Michelle play golf. It's a hot
September afternoon, and he is standing at the edge of a driving range 25 miles outside Honolulu. The trade winds
are blowing hard off the Pacific, whipping the leaves of the banyan trees. The golf course here, Ko Olina, is a dry,
dusty spot near the center of Oahu--nothing like the lush Hawaii of postcards. The grass is brownish, and shrubby
hills block views of the Pacific. For the Wie family, in many ways this is home. It is here that they practice golf--
planning and preparing every putt, every chip, every drive. It is here, now, that they have come to get ready for the
tournament that will soon change their lives forever.

As BJ looks on, his wife Bo sits cross-legged on the grass at Michelle's feet and tees up a ball for her. She says
something quietly in Korean, their native tongue. Michelle instantly sucks in her tummy. Her body, long and curvy,
coils like a letter C over the tee. A gust of wind whips her black ponytail sideways, but her gaze remains intense and
focused on the ball. BJ and Bo are intense too, studying their daughter, the way her wrists cock, her elbows tuck, and
her knees bow. She swings, and cracks the ball into the air. It cuts through the wind, and disappears behind a hill
somewhere at the back of the range.

"It's been a really special time, this period before ..." BJ pauses, as though he's not sure how to describe what's to
come next. "I know next year, it's not going to be the same."

Right now Michelle Wie is a girl on the verge. At the cusp of womanhood, she is about to become the next million-
dollar baby of sports. She is about to be so rich, so famous, that a year from now the girl teeing up her ball today will
no longer exist. After she turns 16 on Oct. 11, she will launch her professional career competing against other women
at the Samsung World Championship in Palm Desert, Calif. Next month, at the Casio World Open in Kochi, Japan, she
makes her pro debut against men. Michelle Wie is the kind of athlete who promises to transcend her sport. People
who don't care about golf or even sports will know her name, in the way they know Joe Montana or Michael Jordan
or Tiger Woods.

Michelle, as an amateur, has already rocked the golf world. At the age of 10, she was the youngest player ever to
qualify for the Women's Amateur Public Links Championship. At 13 she won it--becoming the youngest champion in
the tournament's history. Last summer she was the first female player to qualify for the Men's U.S. Amateur Public
Links Championship, earning a shot at competing in the Masters--where no woman has gone before. Michelle was
eliminated in the quarterfinals, but for several breathtaking days of golf, she fought for a spot at Augusta.

With a drive that can blast more than 300 yards (her best yet, the Wies say, is 391), she outguns most of the women
on the professional tour----and nearly half the men. Her aim isn't just to be the greatest female golfer; it's to be the
greatest golfer, period. Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson--that's who she views as the competition. This is no
empty boast: She played her first professional men's event at 13, at the Bay Mills Open on the Canadian tour. Since
then she has played in four more men's tournaments. As a professional, she plans to play on both the PGA and LPGA
tours. If she succeeds, she will make history.
Her drive to take on the boys has become the biggest story in sports. It's a cliffhanger: Will she qualify for the PGA
Tour? Will she make it to Augusta? Can she win? Everywhere she plays, people want to watch. "People are intrigued
by her. They want to see what she can do," says Clair Peterson, tournament director of the John Deere Classic, an
event on the PGA Tour. He gave her an exemption to compete in this year's tournament in July. That created a mini-
tempest among some tour members. Mark Hensby, the defending champion, said publicly she didn't deserve to be
there. Yet as 10,000 fans followed her around the course, the tournament's gross climbed 40%, to $2.8 million. Its TV
audience was over two million viewers, up 54% from the year before. "That's huge. That's a Tiger rating," says Kevin
Landy, a TV producer for USA Network, which broadcast the event.

Simply put, Michelle sells. For this reason, major advertisers from automakers to cosmetics companies are after her.
As this issue went to press the Wies were close to wrapping up a five-year deal with Nike with a base of at least $5
million plus incentives that could pay out far more, sources close to the negotiations say. A slightly smaller deal with
Sony was close to completion. In her first year as a pro, with sponsorship deals and prize money combined, she could
make $10 million or more, the sources say. That's huge, considering that the No. 1 female golfer, Annika Sorenstam,
will make close to $8 million this year. And it's just the beginning.

To negotiate deals and manage Michelle's career the Wies have hired the William Morris Agency, the legendary
Hollywood shop. "There is no shortage of offers," says David Wirtschafter, president of William Morris, which also has
a few handpicked sports clients, such as Serena Williams. "If she plays on both tours, she will be viewed in the same
economic light as the male players." That means a lot more money: Tiger Woods will make well over $80 million this
year, ten times Sorenstam's paycheck.

To earn that kind of money, though, Michelle still has a long way to go. "We as a company would be interested in
her, absolutely," says Larry Peck, marketing manager for golf at Buick, which sponsors three PGA Tour events and is
paying Tiger Woods a reported $35 million to sell cars. "But she has got a lot to prove--she's got to compete and
win." So far, despite many exciting close calls, Michelle has won just one tournament, the Women's Amateur in 2003.
Now, as a pro, she will have to show she can fulfill the promise of her amateur career. And that will take some big
adjustments.

Up to this point it has been the three Wies--Michelle, BJ, and Bo--vs. the world. As first-generation Americans who
speak English as a second language, BJ (short for Byung-Wook) and Bo (short for Hyun Kyong) have guided their
daughter's every move through the fierce world of high-stakes golf. They taught her to play. They attend every
practice, every tournament. Until recently BJ, a professor of transportation at the University of Hawaii, has been her
caddie, her manager, her press agent, her contract negotiator. Now all that's about to change. It's not just about
going pro: Michelle, their only child, is almost ready to go out into the world on her own. And BJ and Bo are almost
ready to let her go.

"MY HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT is ripping pictures out of Us Weekly--you know, to figure out what my style is going
to be," Michelle tells me one evening after practice. "You know Kate Hudson? I love her look." We are sitting in the
back seat of her parents' car, driving to her favorite sushi restaurant in Waikiki. Michelle is talking about how she and
her newly hired image consultant, David Lipman, are constructing a new look to go with her new status. Lipman
revamped N'Sync's Justin Timberlake from teenybopper to Hollywood hunk. He is also working with Angelina Jolie.
When Michelle appeared on the David Letterman show this summer, Lipman dressed her in Dolce & Gabbana heels
and a slinky Alexander McQueen top that made the TV host stammer. Over six feet tall, with creamy skin and black
sloping eyes, Michelle Wie is a knockout. "She has something I've never seen before," says Lipman. "When she did
Letterman, she stepped out of the car with all the paparazzi there and she walked the red carpet like Nicole Kidman.
She knew which way to turn her shoulder to the cameras. She knew where to look. Nobody taught her that."
But for all her movie-star looks and It Girl vibe, Michelle is still very much a teenager. She stresses about the SATs and
getting into college. (Her top choice is Stanford.) She worries about getting fat. She loves movies and shopping and
gossip. Even when she talks about her career, at times she is more schoolgirl than pro golfer. "My agent says he
might be able to arrange for me to meet Brad Pitt!" she tells me excitedly. At one point, as we drive through Oahu
traffic, Michelle glances at an instant message from her cousin in Los Angeles. "Omigod!" she suddenly squeals.
"Johnny Depp is getting his hand put, you know, in Hollywood!" She spreads out her fingers as though she were
pushing them into wet concrete. Then, looking over at me, she says very seriously--like this is something I need to
know: "I love Johnny Depp."

From a marketer's perspective, Michelle Wie is a dream. Not just an incredible athlete, she's also young, beautiful,
and perhaps best of all, approachable. Look at the faces in the galleries that follow her around tournaments. It's not
your typical golf crowd. Little girls and teenage boys are alongside middle-aged men and soccer moms. And the
Wies are ready to take advantage of it. During one practice, Michelle is wearing a thick stack of bangles on her wrist.
Later I ask if they get in the way of her swing. When she says no, she likes wearing them, her father, without missing a
beat, tells me, "That's good. She can have a watch company sponsor her."

Perhaps no one is more aware of her selling power than Michelle herself. It's clear that her aim is not to be just a
golfer with some nice endorsements. Indeed, she picked William Morris over other agencies for a simple reason: It
had no other golfer. "I'm an only child, so I guess I'm used to being exclusive," she shrugs. One rival shop, IMG, has
many golfers on its roster, including Woods and Sorenstam. But William Morris has deep connections in movies, TV,
books, and music, and a 106-year history as a starmaker. "She is going to be bigger than sports," says Wirtschafter.
"She will become a face and a figure in the world. Michael Jordan was one of those people. And if all goes well she
could be some version of that."

To get there, Wirtschafter and his team at William Morris are packaging Michelle as an exclusive product. Right now
the team is sifting through offers but is in no hurry to commit. CEOs of major corporations are clamoring to meet her.
Sony chairman Nobuyuki Idei has played a round of golf with her. Still, not just any sponsor with a fat checkbook gets
through the door. "We don't want to turn Michelle into a NASCAR racer," says Ross Berlin, whom Wirtschafter
poached this summer from the PGA Tour to be Michelle's agent. The idea is to have a small number of big sponsors
who elevate Michelle's status. Michelle, who speaks Japanese and Korean, is already known in Asia. Now the aim is to
make her famous everywhere from Sydney to Seoul to San Diego.

She'll have fashion experts help her choose what dress to wear, what haircut to get, which lipstick to apply. She'll learn
to move on television. She'll appear in magazines, everything from Sports Illustrated to Vogue. "We want to define
her physical persona, both on and off the golf course," explains Lipman. Her look is still a work in progress, but
Michelle already has ideas. "I'm not preppy," she insists. On the golf course, the land of striped shirts and khaki, she's
aiming for a younger, edgier style. She has talked with Nike about designing her a hip mini-dress to play in. She also
wants to scrap baseball hats in favor of newsboy caps--the kind J. Lo wears in her videos. During a recent meeting
with a designer at Nike, she talked about turning one current fashion craze into a trend on the links: the golfing
cowboy boot. "How cool is that?" she asks. Don't laugh: If Michelle Wie wears them, it could be that golfers
everywhere will be dressing like ranch hands.

For sure, Michelle Wie will be a pretty package, one that any advertiser would be after. Ultimately, however, she's
getting paid to play golf--and win. If five years from now she's still missing cuts and trying to earn a spot on the PGA
Tour, she won't be so alluring. And while she has come close to winning other tournaments, Michelle has also been
known to crumble, particularly on the putting green. This year at the Sony Open, she three-putted within eight feet of
the pin for a triple bogey. At the Women's U.S. Open, she was tied for the lead but blew her last round by missing
several critical putts and finished in 23rd place. "Now, she's going to make something like $10 million? For what? For
winning one tournament?" asks Morgan Pressel, who placed second in the Women's Open. As Michelle turns pro, the
pressure is on: Sponsors pay the really big bucks for championships, not missed putts.

"THIS IS THE BIRDIE RANGE," Bo Wie tells me on a recent afternoon, sitting on the practice green of Ko Olina. She
points to the three-yard gap between where we are sitting--directly behind a hole in the middle of the green--and
where Michelle is standing. "Everyone expects to make a birdie here," Bo says, explaining why she and Michelle are so
focused on this particular distance. Her English is heavily accented, and she speaks as though she is self-conscious
about it--slowly, softly. "If she makes the birdie putt, she keeps the momentum. It is important to keep the
momentum."

This is where championships are won and lost. Golfers have an expression: Drive for show and putt for dough. In
Michelle's case it couldn't be more apt. While her 300-yard drive makes her an exciting player, it's her short game
that will make or break her. To learn to handle the pressures of championship play, Michelle has started seeing
psychologist Jim Loehr. He has worked with other athletes, such as Nick Faldo and Jim Courier; he also helps Navy
Seals, FBI agents, and FORTUNE 500 executives perform in their respective combat zones. Based in Orlando, he
advises Michelle mostly by e-mail and telephone.

She takes this aspect of her training very seriously. Every week she sends him detailed messages describing her state
of mind. Using this insight, he has given her this advice: Lighten up. "When she's on the golf course she should look
around and think to herself, Isn't this beautiful? Aren't I lucky to be here?" explains Loehr. He says she should play less
golf, advising her to take one day off a week. When she misses putts, he has instructed her to repeat this mantra to
herself: "I've gotten that out of the way. Now I'm one step closer to being the best putter in the history of golf."

As Bo looks on, Michelle lines up her putt. Both mother and daughter are focusing intensely: Michelle on the ball, Bo
on Michelle. Michelle takes a tiny step closer to the ball and Bo tilts her body sideways to get a better look at her
stance. She says something in Korean. Michelle tucks in her elbows. Then she slowly swings, tapping the ball gently
toward the hole. It reaches the cup, hovers for a moment at its lip, and then stops abruptly. "Ayyyy!" Bo says, flapping
her hands like she's trying to push the ball in. Then she tosses the ball back to Michelle. Michelle will practice the
same shot, again and again, all afternoon, as she does every afternoon. And Bo will sit here--she does every
afternoon--until Michelle gets it right.

Bo Wie taught her family to play golf. She learned the game as a teenager in Korea. After she married BJ in 1988, she
taught him. When BJ graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in transportation science, the
couple moved to Honolulu, where BJ had been given his job at the University of Hawaii. In 1989, Bo gave birth to
Michelle.

BJ, who is 44, and Bo, 39, are no ordinary parents. From early on they were intense about sports. When Michelle was
still a toddler they exposed her to a range--soccer, softball, tennis, and, of course, golf. They eliminated the ones at
which she did not excel. By the time she was 7 they had narrowed it down to tennis and golf. According to BJ and Bo,
Michelle could have been a great tennis player. She hit the ball hard and had powerful ground strokes. But there was
one big problem with her game: "She didn't like to run," BJ says. One day, he and his daughter had a huge fight on
the court because she refused to rush the net. "After that I threw away all the tennis balls, and we concentrated on
golf," he says.

From an early age Michelle could blast her drives extraordinary distances. By the time she was seven, BJ says, "she
demonstrated an ability to hit ridiculously far as compared to other kids." Greg Nichols, director of golf at Ko Olina,
who has known Michelle since she was 11, says, "Watching her play, it was hard to believe how much power this little
girl could generate." But talent can be squandered. Tournaments are exciting; practicing for them is excruciatingly
tedious. It's hitting the same shot, maybe 100 times. Not many kids are able to keep at it. BJ and Bo made it their job
to keep Michelle motivated. They used to pay her 25 cents per par hole; now it's $5 per birdie. All around their house
they put up posters of Tiger Woods, whose swing BJ and Bo initially taught Michelle to copy. Watching Tiger was how
they began, as a family, to dream about Michelle playing the PGA Tour. One year they were watching Woods
compete in the Masters, and Michelle announced that she, too, would play there when she got big. "It started like
that--and we just never discouraged her," says BJ.

BJ and Bo go everywhere Michelle does. Each afternoon they pick her up after school and take her to the golf course.
They are at every practice, every tournament. Even on Michelle's day off from golf, Bo goes to get facials with her.
She and BJ quit playing golf themselves to concentrate on her game. "I have never seen a family so close," says Linda
Johnston, a family friend from Hawaii. "It's almost like they are one person."

One night at dinner Bo tells me she plans to follow Michelle to college. "Not going to happen!" Michelle declares
irritably, giving her mother a look only teenage girls can pull off, and only with their mothers. Bo smiles mysteriously
but says nothing. I ask what she's thinking. "I have a plan, but I'm not going to say what it is, because I don't want
Michelle to know," she says. Michelle rolls her eyes. Still, she acknowledges how critical her parents' attention has
been to her game. "If my mom weren't there, I probably wouldn't practice," she concedes.

WATCHING MICHELLE WIE hit her drive is like hearing Renée Fleming hit a high C. "When she addresses the ball, the
first thing you'll notice is she has a presence about her. She's like a panther: She oozes power, she oozes athleticism,"
says her coach, David Leadbetter, who also trains Ernie Els. "She holds the club like she's molded to it." Her swing is a
distilled force. When she connects with the ball, she crushes it. Her whole body thrusts with the force of her shot.

Still, for all her power, Michelle needs more to compete with the big boys. Right now, on her drive, the carry----the
amount of time her ball stays in the air--is about 260 yards, short of the good male players on the tour. To put her in
contention to play and win on the PGA Tour, Leadbetter is modifying her drive. By adjusting the plane of her
backswing, he hopes to increase her carry by 10% over the next three years. Already, her drive is starting to gain on
those of the men. "It has that sound--that extra pop--you only hear that from the guys," says Dan Forsman, a pro
golfer who competed with Michelle this summer in a pro-am event. And it is this pop, this big bang, that makes her
one of the most exciting players in golf to watch.

At this summer's John Deere Classic, Michelle singlehandedly transformed the normally sleepy, low-caliber event into
front-page news. "We had crowds like we've never seen before," says Clair Peterson, the tournament's director.
Players complained that as an amateur she had not qualified for it. Yet as soon as she started to play any questions
about her right to compete were quelled. "She was electric," recalls Kevin Landy, the event's TV producer. "Even all
the guys in the [TV] truck--and they are a pretty jaded crew----every one of them was on the edge of his seat." It was
incredibly exciting golf. If she won the tournament, she would automatically earn an invitation to play at the Men's
British Open. If she just made the cut, she would be the first woman to do that in a PGA Tour event since Babe
Zaharias did it in 1945. Sorenstam missed the cut at the PGA tour's Colonial tournament in 2003 and has not since
played a men's event.

The whole golfing world, it seemed, had stopped to watch Michelle play. D.A. Weibring, a player on the seniors tour,
was competing in a tournament in Michigan that week with golfing legends like Tom Watson and Fuzzy Zoeller.
"Everybody in the locker room was crowded around the TV set," recalls Weibring. The old-timers watched this girl
assault the gates of one of the most revered tournaments in men's golf. "No one wanted to leave the locker room.
Everyone was asking, 'Can she make the cut?'" says Weibring.

By the second day of the match she was four under par. That day, all she had to do was play it safe by shooting a par
round, and she'd make it to the next day of the tournament. But she didn't play it for par; she went for birdies. "It was
like she wasn't playing to make the cut. She was playing to win," recalls Clair Peterson.

On the 15th hole she noticed that Mark Hensby was two strokes ahead of her. He was the one who had said she
didn't deserve to be there. She decided to try to catch him. She says she had originally planned to use a five-wood
on the hole. Instead, to blast closer to the green she hit her three-wood. It didn't pay off: Her drive landed in a
bunker, and Michelle ended up double-bogeying the hole. By the end of the day she was one under par and had lost
her shot at the British Open.

It was a reckless, even childish, way to play. But it showed this about Michelle Wie: She has the guts of a champion.
Great athletes don't play it safe. They make moves the rest of us would be too nervous to attempt. "When there's
trouble, she likes to hit the ball harder," affirms Leadbetter. He hopes to channel this instinct into a weapon. At the
same time, he is training her to restrain her power to gain accuracy on approach shots. This paid off at the
McDonald's LPGA Championship this past summer, when Michelle placed second behind Sorenstam.

"FIVE DOLLARS REALLY MOTIVATES ME, so think what all this is going to do," Michelle tells me when I ask what's
going to be different about turning pro. She's grinning----referring to her parents' inducements----but not joking.
Getting paid to play golf changes the stakes not just for Michelle, but for Bo and BJ as well.

BJ and Bo are determined to protect Michelle from the pitfalls of fame and fortune. They insist that Michelle will
complete her education. In two years, on schedule, she will graduate from the Punahou School in Honolulu, which
she's attended since sixth grade. After that she'll go to college. "It may take eight years," says BJ, "but she will
graduate." To prevent her millions from corrupting her and her game, BJ is putting everything she earns into a trust
that she can't touch until she's 18. The money will be invested conservatively, and neither he nor Bo will have access
to it. BJ has tried hard to protect Michelle from the dark side of fame, instructing her not to read articles critical of her.
He has also tried to control the press as best he can, carefully choosing how to present Michelle's image to the
public. Recently Vogue magazine requested an interview with Michelle. BJ deferred it, waiting for the time he feels
splashy photos in Vogue would be right for his daughter.

Still, as Michelle goes out into the world, it will become harder and harder for BJ and Bo to protect her. The rich and
famous are targets--and Michelle will be no different. Every tournament she plays will be scrutinized and critiqued.
This summer a British newspaper cast Michelle as a sulky diva because she split with the caddie she was using at the
Women's British Open. She was also publicly criticized for competing in this year's McDonald's LPGA Championship.
The tournament changed its rules to allow Michelle, as an amateur, to play--mainly to jack up excitement for the
event. "This is the kind of tournament you should earn your way into," Cristie Kerr, winner of six LPGA Tour titles, told
Sports Illustrated. "If we have to resort to this sort of thing for publicity, maybe we should look at other ways." Golfing
champ Nancy Lopez added, "She should have played more amateur golf against her peers and gotten used to
winning." Michelle ended up placing second.

Asked how she feels about being criticized publicly, Michelle says "It's kind of fun playing when people are against
you." But she concedes that it irritates her when other people try to tell her how to play her game. "It bothers me
when they act like they know me," she says.

ONE AFTERNOON on the range, the three Wies are huddled together, staring at the screen of a laptop computer.
They are watching a video, shot a few minutes earlier, of Michelle hitting her drive. Michelle sits cross-legged on the
grass while BJ stands to her right to block out the sun, and Bo looks over her shoulder. They say nothing. They are
trying to detect whether Michelle has been able to make a small but critical adjustment to her swing. Hunched
around this miniature version of Michelle, they are like a cocoon. For years now, they've been nourishing and
protecting this swing. Now it's almost ready to go out into the world.

On the screen in slow motion, the tiny Michelle arches her club back and then lowers it to the ball. Michelle rewinds
the video, and plays it back again, this time frame by frame. She, BJ, and Bo watch as her miniaturized arms move
second by second toward the ball. It's almost suspenseful: Has she made the adjustment?

Suddenly Michelle snaps the computer shut. Bo and BJ gather up her clubs and put them in the back of their golf
cart. Their faces are unreadable. Then Michelle says simply, "I did it." She walks over to her parents, who are waiting in
the cart. Then the three of them head for the 1st tee.

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