Post by chargepads on Apr 21, 2012 18:05:40 GMT -5
www.golfdigest.com/golf-tours-news/2012-03/gwar-michelle-wie-education
On A crisp late February afternoon, Michelle Wie walks into one of her favorite hangouts on Stanford's sprawling campus. It's the unpretentious CoHo Coffee House, bustling with students studying, chatting, snacking. She wears blue jeans and a thick scarf and carries a lime-green backpack that nearly matches the colored streaks in her ponytail. She seamlessly blends into the scene, even at 6 feet tall.
Wie spends more than 45 minutes at a table and only one person--holding a small sign and awkwardly soliciting a charitable donation, not an autograph--approaches. (The woman had no earthly idea Wie is rich and famous).
This is one of many reasons Wie savored her life the past 4.5 years. She did not wander in public as Michelle Wie, Onetime Phenom Who Dared to Play in PGA Tour Events. She was simply another Stanford student, making friends and hanging out with people her own age--saddled with the same academic angst, trying to navigate the same path to graduation.
"It's nice having people not judge you by the face," Wie says of blending into the crowd on campus. "My friends here don't know anything about golf, so it's nice to get to know people by actually getting to know them--not them knowing your bio straight off the bat and kind of judging you."
She didn't really take the same path as her classmates, in many ways, because she's still Michelle Wie. Nothing about the first 22-plus years of her life smacks of normalcy, from her early golf feats and majestic swing to her widely debated decisions to compete against men and eventually enroll at Stanford.
Now, as spring arrives and the LPGA's first major championship nears, here's one fact beyond debate: Wie soon will become a college graduate, an extraordinary accomplishment for a golfer who played at least 19 professional tournaments each of the past three years. She attended her last classes last week and will complete her last final exam this week, before traveling to Rancho Mirage, Calif., for the Kraft Nabisco Championship starting March 29.
This milestone--finishing her studies (with a major in communications) and embarking on the next phase of her career--stirs many emotions in Wie. She will move with her parents, B.J. and Bo, to the house she bought last summer in Jupiter, Fla. She plans to play at the Bear's Club, seek putting and painting tips from Luke Donald and immerse herself in the itinerant world of a tour pro. It is a striking contrast to the communal nature of college, where she routinely flocked with friends to Stanford football, basketball and volleyball games.
"I'm really excited to graduate and get to the next part of my life, where I can focus on golf and have more time to do other things," Wie says. "But I'm also sad because it's been the best 4½ years of my life. There's really no other experience in life like college, where you're all put into this little bubble and you all grow together."
Wie relished the growth, from struggling through an engineering class on "Nanotechnology" to thoroughly enjoying a class on "Virtual Reality." She lived in on-campus dormitories for four of the five years, learned to become more self-sufficient and no longer fears she will act like a needy high-school kid in her 30s and 40s, dependent on her doting parents.
That counts as one of the most significant ways her time at Stanford shaped Wie, to hear her tell it: her relationship with her parents. They moved to Northern California when Wie arrived at Stanford, taking the concept of hovering parents to another level and prompting rampant skepticism and snickering in golf circles.
On A crisp late February afternoon, Michelle Wie walks into one of her favorite hangouts on Stanford's sprawling campus. It's the unpretentious CoHo Coffee House, bustling with students studying, chatting, snacking. She wears blue jeans and a thick scarf and carries a lime-green backpack that nearly matches the colored streaks in her ponytail. She seamlessly blends into the scene, even at 6 feet tall.
Wie spends more than 45 minutes at a table and only one person--holding a small sign and awkwardly soliciting a charitable donation, not an autograph--approaches. (The woman had no earthly idea Wie is rich and famous).
This is one of many reasons Wie savored her life the past 4.5 years. She did not wander in public as Michelle Wie, Onetime Phenom Who Dared to Play in PGA Tour Events. She was simply another Stanford student, making friends and hanging out with people her own age--saddled with the same academic angst, trying to navigate the same path to graduation.
"It's nice having people not judge you by the face," Wie says of blending into the crowd on campus. "My friends here don't know anything about golf, so it's nice to get to know people by actually getting to know them--not them knowing your bio straight off the bat and kind of judging you."
She didn't really take the same path as her classmates, in many ways, because she's still Michelle Wie. Nothing about the first 22-plus years of her life smacks of normalcy, from her early golf feats and majestic swing to her widely debated decisions to compete against men and eventually enroll at Stanford.
Now, as spring arrives and the LPGA's first major championship nears, here's one fact beyond debate: Wie soon will become a college graduate, an extraordinary accomplishment for a golfer who played at least 19 professional tournaments each of the past three years. She attended her last classes last week and will complete her last final exam this week, before traveling to Rancho Mirage, Calif., for the Kraft Nabisco Championship starting March 29.
This milestone--finishing her studies (with a major in communications) and embarking on the next phase of her career--stirs many emotions in Wie. She will move with her parents, B.J. and Bo, to the house she bought last summer in Jupiter, Fla. She plans to play at the Bear's Club, seek putting and painting tips from Luke Donald and immerse herself in the itinerant world of a tour pro. It is a striking contrast to the communal nature of college, where she routinely flocked with friends to Stanford football, basketball and volleyball games.
"I'm really excited to graduate and get to the next part of my life, where I can focus on golf and have more time to do other things," Wie says. "But I'm also sad because it's been the best 4½ years of my life. There's really no other experience in life like college, where you're all put into this little bubble and you all grow together."
Wie relished the growth, from struggling through an engineering class on "Nanotechnology" to thoroughly enjoying a class on "Virtual Reality." She lived in on-campus dormitories for four of the five years, learned to become more self-sufficient and no longer fears she will act like a needy high-school kid in her 30s and 40s, dependent on her doting parents.
That counts as one of the most significant ways her time at Stanford shaped Wie, to hear her tell it: her relationship with her parents. They moved to Northern California when Wie arrived at Stanford, taking the concept of hovering parents to another level and prompting rampant skepticism and snickering in golf circles.