As originally aired on the Rochester Press Box
Michelle Wie was once ‘all the rage.’ She was a golfer in a sport starving for a new face. And hers was very new. Wie burst on the scene with a 13-stroke victory in the Hawaii State championship. At the age of 13. That began a series of youngest-ever marks that included the youngest to qualify for an LPGA event, the youngest to make a cut, and perhaps most notably, the youngest woman to play in a PGA event. She was given a sponsor’s exemption at the SONY Open in Hawaii and shot a second round 68 at the age of 15. All told she played in four men’s events.
It is difficult to judge the success of a career that began like that. Suffice to say she failed to meet impossible expectations. Wie left the game as a full-time player last year at age 33 with five career LPGA victories including a US Open crown in 2014. She wasn’t the female version of Tiger Woods. Nor was she a cautionary tale.
That’s where Rose Zhang comes in. The twenty-year-old Stanford sophomore won her first LPGA tournament on her first try. That hadn’t been done in 72 years. And it’s no fluke. Her win in Jersey City at the Liberty National Golf Club came just thirteen days after capturing her second straight NCAA championship. Claiming she didn’t even expect to make the cut, Rose Zhang is absolutely everything you’d want from your next big thing. This is how it all works. Last week, Zhang created a seismic shift in the sports landscape. Whether she becomes the next Wie or the next Woods, it doesn’t much matter. The LPGA is suddenly and unmistakably watchable again.
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