The Sure Thing

If you read The Sure Thing, you’re going to end up hoping the story isn’t over yet.

Eric Adelson had his first conversation with Michelle Wie when the golfer was ten. She was already exceptionally good. She was already being promoted energetically by her father, who would eventually play a large role in crashing Wie’s career into the rocks before she could win a single LPGA tournament.

Now, having suffered putting woes, injuries, and the criticism of most of the women who play on the LPGA tour and lots of the men who play on the PGA tour, Wie is trying to construct a career that will include actually winning a professional golf tournament or two. Her previous self appeared to be interested only in trying to make the cut at a PGA tournament, qualifying for the Men’s U.S. Open, or competing with Tiger Woods at the Masters.

Adelson establishes that Wie was an exceptional talent as a very young golfer, and suggests that a lot of the choices made by her father on Wie’s behalf were stupid, greedy, and destructive. Now that she has gone the standard route of qualifying to play in LPGA tournaments (and has also won half a million dollars playing in same during 2009), perhaps the subtitle of Adelson’s book should be changed from “the making and unmaking of golf phenom Michelle Wie” to “the making and unmaking and making again of Michelle Wie.”