Wie, Michelle

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    Michelle Wie West Wants to Win the U.S. Women’s Open One More Time

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    You could see the head tilts and darting glances when people peered around Pebble Beach’s Gallery Cafe, or as visitors sat on the patio that looks toward the cypress-guarded 18th green by Stillwater Cove. They surfaced at a luncheon with Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, and during a climb up a flight of stairs, and a stroll through a lobby.That’s Michelle Wie West, that 6-foot fixture of collective memory and modern golf history.She did not win as much as she wanted to, and certainly not as much as many people thought she would or should have. But after close to a quarter of a century in the spotlight, she is still one of the savviest stars women’s golf has ever had, a player plenty of people outside of golf know as a star even if they do not know golf.The competitive golf part of Wie’s life will most likely be done by dusk on Sunday, when the U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to finish at Pebble Beach. If things don’t go well, and they might not since Wie West’s husband will be her caddie for the first time and she has barely played lately, it could be over by dusk on Friday. After the Open, she has no plans to return to elite competition, though she dodges the word “retirement” in public (and confesses to sometimes using it in private).She is 33.That went fast, didn’t it?Wie West on No. 18 at Lake Merced Golf Course during the Mediheal Championship last year.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 2000, when she was 10 and Bill Clinton was president, she played the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. She won the event when she was 13, the same age she made an L.P.G.A. tournament cut and had a turn in third place on a major tournament’s weekend leaderboard. She played a PGA Tour event at 14, turned professional at 15, rattled off three top-five finishes in her first three majors as a pro, battled wrist trouble, won the Open at 24 and then spent years with more injuries, cuts and withdrawals than strong showings.So it was not that fast, after all. Soon, though, it will apparently be finished. Barring a victory this weekend or a surprise in the years ahead, Wie West will finish with five L.P.G.A. Tour wins, including the 2014 Open at Pinehurst, tied for 69th on the career victory list. It adds up to a far better career than most players, though short of the mighty expectations that followed Wie West from the start and flowed from a blend of internet-age youth, talent, celebrity and marketability. (By way of comparison, Inbee Park, a 34-year-old player from South Korea, has won seven majors but has long drawn a fraction of the public attention that Wie West commanded.)“What’s the right word for this?” Wie West said in an interview in a sun-splashed lounge, well out of earshot of any aides.“I feel very — confident that I had the career that I wanted to,” she continued eventually. “Obviously, I wish I could have done more as well. I think anyone and everyone thinks that.”But, she said, “the what-ifs and the regrets and the ‘I wish I could have done this better’ can drive you truly insane.”Even last year’s announcement of a transition, to use her publicly preferred term, got derailed when her husband came down with Covid-19 and Wie West’s parents stayed back to help with child care. Ready to detail the wind-down she had rolled out on Instagram the previous week, Wie West wound up nearly alone at the 2022 Open in North Carolina.Wie West during the second round of last year’s U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersShe had been mulling for years whether it was time to stop playing, frustrated by injuries and, more recently, torn by the notion of her family of three having only so much time together. In 2021, vulgar comments about Wie West by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, jolted her into a fresh sense of purpose.But there eventually came a point, she said, when she realized the game’s toll was ultimately too high, when she feared her body would be so broken down she would not even be able to play a round for pleasure with her daughter. Her clubs have been in her bag almost exclusively ever since.“It’s hard,” she said, “it’s hard to know when the right time is to walk away.”That is assuredly in part because, for an athlete in any sport, stepping back from competition means the statistics are done and that the résumé is, with few exceptions, frozen. For Wie West, retiring or transitioning or whatever you want to call it meant firing up the inevitable debate about whether she had been a squandered or overhyped talent.She hears it, of course. She also gets it.“People love to chirp and have their own feeling and whatnot, and they totally have the right to it: They have been invested in my career,” she said. “I know I haven’t won as many as I, quote-unquote, should have.”At the same time, she seems to wonder how fair it is. She earned a degree from Stanford and won a U.S. Open, and those two feats, she figures, are what she wanted to do anyway.And yet she can still run through all of the ways her career could have been different: if she had held onto a share of the lead at the 2005 Open at Cherry Hills, if her quest that year to earn a spot in the Masters had worked out, if she had made the cut at her first PGA Tour event instead of missing it by a stroke.She is entering this week’s 156-woman Open with measured expectations against a deep field.The reigning champion, Minjee Lee, has won two majors since 2021 and is not ranked in the top-five in the world. And there is Rose Zhang, the 20-year-old Stanford student who last month won her debut tournament as a professional. Wie West’s group, which will tee off at 8:28 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, includes the three-time major winner In Gee Chun and Annika Sorenstam, who logged 10 major victories in her career and received a special exemption into this week’s field.Wie West celebrated after winning the U.S. Open in 2014.Streeter Lecka/Getty ImagesThis spring, Wie West was musing about how she needed to get her stamina up for the rigors of a major, how she needed to hone her iron and wedge play before returning to one of golf’s biggest stages, especially since it will be played this year on one of the sport’s most beloved courses.“Just have to believe in myself, just get to a point where I feel confident that I can execute the shots and make the putts,” she said. “And I’m hoping that it all comes very quickly.”She plans to remain closely connected to the sport — she recently hosted the L.P.G.A. tournament that Zhang won — but insisted that she does not think much about how she transformed perceptions of the game that she said still enchants her.Even now, she said, she will play with her husband and become persuaded that, like every other golfer who has won, lost or never actually contested a major, she has unlocked the sport’s mysteries.“You get that one feeling and it feels really good, and you’re like, ‘I think I’ve figured out the game. I’ve figured it out!” she said. “I still catch myself saying that almost every time I play, so I know there’s an itch to want to get better.”Soon enough, after all of this time, it will be happening away from the spotlight. More

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      Stanford Golf Star Rose Zhang Is Ready for Her Professional Debut

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      Zhang’s career is likely to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, now that college athletes are allowed to make money.Not long before Rose Zhang clutched a microphone on Tuesday, Michelle Wie West laughingly made an observation: Zhang might have logged more weeks as the world’s No. 1 amateur women’s golfer than Wie West spent as an amateur, period.It was an exaggeration — even though Wie West became a professional at 15 years old and Zhang spent more than 140 weeks in the top spot — but it also wryly underscored how Zhang’s rise in women’s golf is playing out differently from how other ascending stars built their careers.In Zhang, who will make her professional debut this week at the Americas Open in Jersey City, N.J., women’s golf is getting the rare prodigy who has played for an American college. And Zhang’s career, however long it lasts and whatever victories it yields, is essentially certain to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, especially now that college athletes are allowed to make money in ways that were forbidden as recently as two years ago.“I believe that if you’re not able to conquer one stage, then you won’t be able to go on to the next one and say it’s time for the next step,” Zhang, 20, said on Tuesday. “So I wanted to see how I fared in college golf, and it turned out well.”To put it mildly.Zhang’s victory in April at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where she posted a tournament-record score one day and broke it the next, let her complete women’s amateur golf’s version of the career Grand Slam since she had already won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior and an individual N.C.A.A. title for Stanford.Zhang after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother Stanford golfer, Tiger Woods, achieved a similar feat in the 1990s. But this month, Zhang added a second individual championship in N.C.A.A. play.Woods competed for Stanford in a wholly different time for college sports, a time when N.C.A.A. athletes were barred from selling their autographs or cutting endorsement deals. When Woods turned pro in 1996, the sponsorships promptly rained down on him. Zhang’s timeline has moved even faster: Wednesday is the first anniversary of the announcement that Adidas had signed her.The economic possibilities in college sports have lately enticed top athletes to pursue degrees and cultivate their talents while earning money and curbing the immediate allures of turning pro. Those possibilities had less of an effect on Zhang, who is from Irvine, Calif., and who chose to attend college before a wave of state laws pressured the N.C.A.A. to loosen its rules in 2021.But they could help shape women’s golf going forward, particularly if Zhang proves that the American college game is far from an athletic dead-end and that pre-prom professionalism is not the surest path to stardom. For some time, it has often seemed that way: Of the women ranked in the top 10 on Tuesday, only one, Lilia Vu, played N.C.A.A. golf (at U.C.L.A.).Representing Stanford, Zhang walked the course at the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s golf championships at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., this month.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesZhang, who plans to continue her Stanford studies but will no longer be eligible to play N.C.A.A. golf, believes that her stint on campus has hardly been time wasted. She said in April that her tenure as a college athlete had been “such an important stage for me” because she craved figuring “out who I really was and my independence.”She added: “It really allowed me to get my own space and really understand what I’m about, and that allows me to improve on my golf game because I realize that a profession is a profession but yourself is also something that you need to work on.”Her professional prospects had not been far from mind, though. She recalled Tuesday that she told her Stanford coach from the beginning that she was aiming to become a professional, even if her schedule for doing so was hazy.In her first season at Stanford, she said, she did not consider professional golf at all. As her sophomore year progressed, she said, it “felt like it was time for the next stage.”“I feel like right now the mind-set is also very simple: try to adjust as much as possible to tour life and figure out what it means to be a professional, what I want to do out here,” said Zhang, already adorned with the logos of Adidas, Callaway, Delta Air Lines and East West Bank. “I feel like I have a lot of time to experiment what I want to do, so that’s kind of the mind-set that I have going throughout my career and even going forward.”Zhang hitting from the fairway during the final round of the N.C.A.A. women’s golf championships.Matt York/Associated PressZhang is entering the professional ranks while women’s golf has no shortage of elite players. Nelly Korda, the Olympic gold medalist from the Tokyo Games, has routinely lurked around the top of leaderboards. Lydia Ko, who in 2015 became the youngest person to reach the world’s No. 1 ranking in professional golf, remains such a dependable power and brilliant player that she was the L.P.G.A.’s money leader in 2022. Minjee Lee has won a major in each of the last two years, and Jin Young Ko returned to the top of the women’s golf ranking this month when she edged Lee in a playoff at the Founders Cup.Zhang, though, may be the player facing the greatest public pressure since Wie West became a professional almost two decades ago. (Wie West will step back from competitive golf after this summer’s U.S. Women’s Open.) Zhang insisted Tuesday that she did not feel particularly vulnerable to expectations, which she tries to perceive as more of a compliment — “They think I have the ability to go out there and win every single time” — than a demand.“Growing up, my family and the people around me have given me high expectations for what I should do as a person, not just as a competitor or a golf player, so I kind of fall back toward those morals and who I am as an individual,” she said. “That allows me to go out there on the golf course and think: ‘OK, today is another round of golf. I’m going to need to do what I need to do on the golf course. If it doesn’t work out, I still have a lot of things going for me in life.’”Zhang celebrated with her Stanford teammates after winning the NCAA women’s golf championships.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAfter the inaugural Americas Open, which will be contested at Liberty National Golf Club, Zhang is expected to compete in the events that make up the rest of the year’s majors circuit for women’s golf. The Women’s P.G.A. Championship will be played at Baltusrol in June, followed by the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach in July, when the Evian Championship will also be held. The Women’s British Open, scheduled for August at Walton Heath, rounds out the majors.Zhang played in three majors last year, with her best finish a tie for 28th at the Women’s British Open. (She did not enter this year’s Chevron Championship, where she tied for 11th in 2020, and instead played for, and won, the Pac-12 Conference’s individual championship.)She does not, she said, have any short-term expectations for performance. This year is about finding her way — and then letting the world watch to see if her way can work. More

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      At the U.S. Women’s Open, Michelle Wie West Reflects on an ‘Amazing Journey’

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      The golfer announced last week that she would play her last tournament for the foreseeable future at Pine Needles. “This week, I’m just soaking it all in,” she said.Michelle Wie West, one of golf’s most celebrated players since she was 10, had breakfast Tuesday morning in the player dining area at the U.S. Women’s Open at the Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in North Carolina.“I had someone come up to me,” Wie West, 32, said, “saying that they were named after me.”She gently rolled her eyes and deadpanned: “So that made me feel really young. I’m at that phase in my life.”Last week, Wie West announced she was stepping away from competitive golf after this week’s championship. She has no plans to play another L.P.G.A. tournament in 2022. The only other event she expects to enter is the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links.She used the word “retire” only once when speaking with reporters on Tuesday and conceded that she could change her mind. But for Wie West, who contended for major championships shortly after her 16th birthday, won five L.P.G.A. events, including the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open, collected endorsements and prize-money earnings in the tens of millions of dollars and, notably, played eight times against men on the PGA Tour, there was the lilt of finality in her voice.“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while,” Wie West said. “It’s been an amazing journey, and I’m very excited for what happens next.”The future, however, could wait for at least another 10 minutes as Wie West tried to summarize her career, which, because of her precocious introduction to elite golf, was lived under the obsessively bright lights of international stardom. Her career was also significantly disrupted by wrist injuries, which caused her to play intermittently or not at all for long stretches. In June 2020, along with her husband Jonnie West, she became a parent for the first time with the birth of the couple’s daughter, Makenna.“First off, I want to say I have zero regrets in my career,” she said. “There’s always that inkling of wishing I had done more. But no one is ever going to be 100 percent satisfied.“I have definitely had an up-and-down career, but I’m extremely proud for the resiliency that I’ve shown,” she said. “I’m extremely proud to have achieved the two biggest dreams that I’ve had — one being graduating from Stanford, and the other winning the U.S. Open.”Wie West was smiling, laughing and at ease. Among all the very public moments of her very public career, this seemed to be an easy one, and she was happy to be back in the setting of her signature on-the-course achievement.“I’m definitely giving myself some grace and enjoying this last week,” she said.For Wie West, whose presence, manifold skills and towering drives drew comparisons to Tiger Woods, what was left unsaid was her impact on women’s golf. She never addressed the topic directly nor did she acknowledge her own substantial influence on the sport’s popularity, but when asked what has changed in the women’s game in the last 20 years, Wie West was animated.“Oh, I mean, so much has changed,” she answered. “Huge kudos to the U.S.G.A. for really buying into the women’s sport and the L.P.G.A. for just growing and keep pushing the boundaries.“When doors get closed on us, we just keep pushing, and I’m just so proud of everyone on tour and the U.S.G.A. for really buying in and setting the level right,” she said.In January, the United States Golf Association nearly doubled the U.S. Women’s Open prize money to $10 million with the winner of this year’s championship earning $1.8 million, the richest single payout in women’s golf.A year ago, only three women on the L.P.G.A. tour earned more than $1.8 million. While the prize money for the men’s U.S. Open is $12.5 million, the U.S.G.A. chief executive Mike Whan has plans to bump the women’s purse to $12 million in a few years.The payouts of golf-industry sponsorship contracts awarded to top men’s golfers continue to overshadow most of those bestowed on women.But on that front, Wie West, who last year joined the L.P.G.A. board of directors and continues to serve in that capacity, had advice, from personal experience, for the golfers who will succeed her.Wie West playing from the 18th tee during the first round of the 2021 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, where she tied for 46th.Adam Hagy/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“As female athletes, a lot of times we get told, ‘Oh, your sponsorship is only worth this much; you should only ask for this much,’ ” Wie West said. “We’re kind of in that mind-set, and I would encourage female younger athletes coming up to say, ‘No, I know my worth. I know what I deserve.’ And ask for more.”Asked if that was what she had done — successfully — she answered: “Yes, for sure.”Wie West is also an investor in a company, LA Golf, that she said was pledging to start new initiatives for women golfers with hopes of financially altering the sponsorship landscape.In the short term, Wie West still has a tournament to compete in this week, one that, given her other priorities, she has not prepared for as she might have 10 or 20 years ago.“Definitely haven’t had the practice schedule that I usually do leading up to U.S. Open,” she said with a grin. “This week, I’m just soaking it all in. Just seeing all the fans, seeing all the players, walking the walk. It’s pretty cool.”Being a past champion of the event helps Wie West enjoy the experience, perhaps more meaningfully than anyone would have expected. In what was something of a surprise, she said that without claiming the U.S. Women’s Open trophy eight years ago, there would not now be an end in sight to her competitive career.“It’s the one tournament I wanted to win ever since I started playing golf,” Wie West said. She then insisted: “If I hadn’t won the 2014 U.S. Open, I would still — I definitely wouldn’t retire. And I would still be out here playing and chasing that win. That win means everything to me.” More

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      Women's PGA Championship: Nelly Korda and Michelle Wie West Have a Big Day

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      On a day when Korda shot a record-tying nine-under-par 63 to take the lead at the Women’s P.G.A. Championship, Wie West made her first cut at a major since 2018.ATLANTA — Michelle Wie West has repeatedly expressed gratitude about returning to the L.P.G.A. Tour in 2021 after chronic wrist injuries sidelined her for the better part of two years. But that doesn’t mean she is satisfied simply teeing it up.Wie West, 31, does not regard this season as one long Brené Brown workshop on courage.When someone said to Wie West this week that it must be great to play unburdened by the expectations that she shouldered as a teenage phenom, her inner warrior heard someone essentially discounting her ability to compete for more titles.“I still carry the same expectations for myself,” said Wie West, whose career goals haven’t fundamentally changed since her 2019 marriage to Jonnie West or the arrival in 2020 of the couple’s first child, a daughter they named Makenna.She remains intent on regaining the form that carried her to five L.P.G.A. tour titles, including the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open. To that end, Wie West saw plenty to smile about on Friday at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club.She carded a three-under-par 69 for a 36-hole total of two-over 146 to make her second consecutive cut; the first came at the L.P.G.A. stop at her home course in Daly City, Calif., this month. It was also the first time she had advanced to the weekend in a major since the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in 2018.Nelly Korda made six straight birdies at the end of her round for a nine-under 63 that tied the tournament record and moved her to the top of the leaderboard at 11 under. The first-round leader, Lizette Salas, finished the day one stroke behind Korda, and Céline Boutier of France shot an eight-under 64 that vaulted her into contention at seven under for the tournament.Maria Fassi of Mexico, at three over, just missed the cut, shooting a 77 that included a two-stroke penalty for slow play.With groups routinely waiting to hit at every hole, and with rounds taking upward of five and a half hours, Fassi was bewildered. Like the driver pulled over for speeding on the Florida Turnpike, she wondered: With so many culprits, why target her?“Pretty frustrating,” said Fassi, who added: “Every L.P.G.A. player will tell you that we know who the slow players are, and the rules officials know who they are. And I’m not one of them.”After her first-round 77, Wie West was woebegone.“I was definitely moping,” she said.Then she phoned home to California and spoke with her husband, who had stayed behind with their daughter. As Wie West described it, he delivered a pep talk with a jab. She said he told her to get her head out of her bottom, except he used a coarser word.“So I did,” Wie West said with a laugh.Starting on No. 1, she played the first seven holes in four under to climb back into the tournament.“That was the first time since a really long time where I felt like every hole looked like a birdie hole to me,” Wie West said. “So that was a lot of fun, and I’ll just kind of build on that mojo.”She negotiated the back nine of the Highlands course in 36 strokes, seven better than on Thursday, leading her to laugh and say, “Most improved on the back nine today.”The joy emanating from Wie West this week is in stark contrast to her tearful appearance at this event in 2019. Placing ice bags on her wrists between shots to numb the pain, Wie West shot consecutive rounds in the 80s to miss the cut.After her opening 12-over 84 back then, she was disconsolate about her playing future. Her surgically repaired right hand was not getting better, she said at the time, and there had been so many injuries before that — to her neck, back, hip, knee and ankle — that she had lost faith in her body’s ability to function.“I’m glad we’re not back at Hazeltine, because that would have brought up some memories,” Wie West said Tuesday at a pretournament news conference.Wie West said last year that childbirth had restored her faith in her body’s resilience. By surviving the cut Friday, Wie West erased the scars of Hazeltine.“Very proud of myself for pushing through,” she said, “and hopefully I can shoot low this weekend.”Erik S.Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockWie West carried a crowd of spectators in her wake the first two days, including a woman on Friday who followed her while carrying a sign that read, “Michelle, I love you,” and was impossible for Wie West to miss.“It’s people like that that make me want to play golf and come back,” Wie West said.On the green at the par-5 18th, a baby in the gallery began to fuss, and Wie West immediately thought of her daughter and felt a huge jolt of guilt at being apart from her.“I felt myself tear up, and I was like, ‘Get yourself together,’” Wie West said.On this day, anyway, Wie West’s mind and body were in sync.“I know I’m on borrowed time,” Wie West said Tuesday. “I know that every shot matters to me more than anyone can ever imagine.” More

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      Players of Asian Descent on the L.P.G.A. Tour Lift Silence on Racism and Sexism

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      The Women’s P.G.A. Championship this week in Atlanta, just minutes from the fatal shootings of six Asian women this year, has surfaced fears and feelings about what it means to be Asian in the United States at a time of pervasive discrimination.ATLANTA — Players of Asian descent have won eight of the past 10 Women’s P.G.A. Championships, but there is nothing cookie cutter about the winners. They include Shanshan Feng of China, who has worn tailored cow pants to reflect her fun-loving personality, and Sung Hyun Park of South Korea, who had a Korean word on her bag that translated to “I am different.”More than five dozen Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are L.P.G.A. members, more than any league or tour in North American professional sports. Several other members have Asian roots, and their convergence on the Atlanta Athletic Club this week for the third major of the season throws into stark relief both their ascendancy and ancestry.The golf course is roughly 15 minutes from two of the three massage businesses where eight people, six of them Asian women, were fatally shot in March in a crime that encapsulates the escalating violence against Asians in America during the pandemic.The rise of anti-Asian hatred and bias has jolted the players out of their silence. For years, these women have endured microaggressions about their names, their appearance, even their success. At a time when Asians have been scapegoated in American communities for the spread of the coronavirus, players of Asian descent who show no fear on the golf course have grown uneasy, and outraged, enough that they are speaking out about what it means, and how it feels, to be Asian in the United States right now.A woman held a sign during a Community Rally Against Racial & Misogynistic Violence at Columbus Park in Manhattan in the spring.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“I’m scared every time I see the news that it could happen to me,” said Yani Tseng, a two-time Women’s P.G.A. champion and the first player from Taiwan to become the world No. 1.Tseng, 32, was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2012, but in 2021 she feels helpless. Tseng, who said she fell in love with America during her first visit in 2007 because everyone “was so nice,” was incredulous when a friend who lives in Irvine, Calif., relayed a terrifying experience she had while seated in her car in a grocery store parking lot. A group of strangers approached her automobile and attempted to open its locked doors, pounding on the car with so much force the vehicle oscillated. After hearing that, Tseng, who has a residence in San Diego, about a 90-minute drive south of Irvine, said, “I was really worried about myself.”At home in Taiwan, her family also frets. “Every time they see the news they say, ‘Are you OK there?’” she said.The nine-time L.P.G.A. tour winner Na Yeon Choi, one of 25 L.P.G.A. members from South Korea, has traveled to events in America in the past accompanied by her mother. But she advised her not to bother coming to the United States for her tournaments this year, even if, or as, travel restrictions are loosened.“I was thinking it’s not safe for her to be alone when I’m focusing on practice,” Choi said. “She can’t speak English, so she’d be stuck in the hotel because I wouldn’t want her going out.”According to a national report released by Stop AAPI Hate, 6,603 incidents of anti-Asian violence, harassment and discrimination were reported to the organization in the previous 12 months ending March 31. Verbal harassment (65.2 percent), shunning (18.1 percent) and physical assault (12.6 percent) led the recorded incidents.Choi advised her mother to stay away from her American tournaments.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAfter a white male gunman allegedly opened fire at the three Atlanta-area spas, the L.P.G.A. released a statement in support of the A.A.P.I. community and Choi received an internal email, which she said was sent to all the players, advising them to be careful when venturing outside the tour bubble at all tournaments.In March, Mike Whan, the departing L.P.G.A. commissioner, said there had been isolated incidents involving Asian players away from tournament venues over the years, including some in which the tour’s security detail had to get involved.The Covid-19 protocols in place during the past year have provided a protective membrane. Players have been prohibited from dining or socializing outside the tournament grounds or their accommodations. And tournaments have had few, if any, spectators. But their environments aren’t airtight, and pandemic protocols are easing, increasing interaction between the players and the public.The players find themselves distracted by worries about the safety of their loved ones — and of themselves.Mina Harigae, 31, a four-time California Women’s Amateur champion from Monterey whose parents are Japanese, said: “I’ll be honest. I got so scared I went online and bought a self-defense stick.”At the year’s first women’s major, which was held outside Palm Springs, Calif., Michelle Wie West said she ran an errand at a strip mall near the course, one of thousands of such pit stops she has made for one forgotten item or another during her nearly two decades of competing in L.P.G.A. events. This time, though, was different.“It was the first time I was truly afraid,” she said, adding, “We’re a target now, unfortunately.”Michelle Wie West felt fearful going out to run errands because of threat of violence against the asian community.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesLydia Ko, 24, a Korean-born New Zealander with 16 L.P.G.A. victories, including two majors, acknowledged at the Los Angeles tour stop in April that she worried about her mother traveling on her own in the United States.Tiffany Joh, a first-generation American, grew up in a nice neighborhood in San Diego. Her South Korean-born parents still live nearby. “It was kind of a sad day when my mom was like, ‘Should we start carrying around pepper spray?’” Joh said.Joh, 34, is easy to place on the golf course. Just follow the laughter. With one-liners as crisp as her iron shots, she spent two years grinding on what is now the Symetra circuit, where she often stayed with families to save money before she joined the L.P.G.A. Tour in 2011.At one stop, Joh recalled, her hosts remarked on her height, which is 5 feet 6 inches, and asked: “Are both your parents Oriental? Because you’re quite tall and built for an Oriental.”“I said, ‘No, I’m not a rug and I’m not a chicken salad, so no, I’m not Oriental,’” Joh said. “And then I was joking around because for me, when I have a sense of discomfort, my defense mechanism is humor. So I said, ‘You know, no one has ever told me my parents are my real parents. Maybe I need to talk to the milkman.’ And they said: ‘Oh, no, sweetie. That would be the soy milk man.’ They were trying to be cute.”Joh added, “It was kind of an example of how you can educate someone without being a jerk about it.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Jane Park has also used humor to deflect uncomfortable situations. Despite having won the U.S. Women’s Amateur while in high school and been on the L.P.G.A. Tour since 2007, Park, an American of Korean descent, could tell from her amateur playing partners’ initial lack of enthusiasm that they thought she was another indistinguishable — in their eyes — Asian player at a pro-am in Arizona several years ago.Park sometimes uses humor to deal with uncomfortable situations.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesSo she decided to play a prank on them. At the first tee, she bowed formally and greeted them in Korean, then said nothing more for the rest of the hole. On the second hole, she asked in English if they were ready for beers, and her playing partners laughed and were animated for the rest of the round.But not every indignity can be dismissed with laughs. Park, 34, lives with her husband and 11-month-old daughter roughly five miles from one of the three massage businesses targeted. She described the spa shootings as “jarring.”They dredged up a memory from a few years ago, when she was waiting to pay for a pair of shoes at a nearby store. A woman behind her in line stage-whispered an anti-Asian pejorative directed at her. “My whole body started sweating,” said Park, who whirled around and said to the woman, “I understand English.”The shootings in Atlanta rattled Inbee Park of South Korea, a three-time Women’s P.G.A. champion and former world No. 1, whose aunt operates a dry-cleaning business not far from where they occurred. “I called her straight away to make sure she was OK,” she said, adding, “It’s really unfortunate what’s happening.”The rise in anti-Asian sentiment in American society has caused players to see experiences they’ve had on the golf course in a different light. Park wondered why broadcasters persisted in mispronouncing the names of Asian players even after she had corrected them on social media. Or why she was asked if she was related to “all the other Parks” on the tour.Christina Kim, a Californian of Korean descent, is tired of hearing that Asians “talk funny” and really tired of the added pressure that Asian-born players on the tour feel to speak the Queen’s English to avoid being mocked or criticized. She is tired of people on social media directing comments to her about the “kung flu.”Christina Kim has had racist comments in her social media feeds calling the coronavirus the “kung flu.”Jim Wilson/The New York TimesPlayers of Asian descent are weary of the many microaggressions that they must deflect, ignore or swallow because competitive golf at the highest level presents enough obstacles without having to also maneuver around race and gender-related hazards.Wie West, the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open champion, said: “I look back at a lot of the questions that reporters ask me. ‘Why are the South Koreans so good?’ That question always bothered me, but I answered it. I’d say, ‘Oh, because they practice really hard’ and by saying that I was playing into the microaggression. I never really put two and two together as to why that question, and certain other comments, bothered me until this year.”The next person who asks Wie West the question will receive a different answer. She said, “I would say that’s a really inappropriate question.” More

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      Michelle Wie West Was Ready to Retire. Then She Got Mad.

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      A golf phenom since she was 10, Michelle Wie West was ready to focus on motherhood. Rudy Giuliani’s vulgar remarks convinced her that she should keep fighting and playing.SAN FRANCISCO — From a distance approximating one of her prodigious drives, Michelle Wie West caught a glimpse of her infant daughter in the arms of her mother, who was standing on a hotel balcony. It was Wie West’s first competitive tournament as a working mom, and at the sight of her child, whom she felt guilty about leaving, she burst into tears.“And then I hit in the water,” Wie West said with a laugh, recalling her “meltdown,” as she described it, during her opening nine-over-par 81 at the Kia Classic near San Diego in March.Wie West, 31, who is competing in the United States Women’s Open, which begins Thursday at the Olympic Club, has missed the cut in all three of her starts this season. The impenetrable focus that carried her to five L.P.G.A. titles, including the 2014 U.S. Open, has been diffused by marriage, motherhood and a motivation to deepen the conversation about, and commitment to, women in sports.Reams of copy have been written about Wie West since she became, at 10, the youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Public Links and announced her intentions to grow up to play on the L.P.G.A. and PGA Tours. She turned pro before her 16th birthday and contended deep into the final rounds of her first three L.P.G.A. major tournaments that first year, establishing a bar that proved hard to clear. She won her first tournament in 2009 at the age of 20, then three more before she won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. But she has only won once since, the HSBC Women’s World Championship in 2018.And so, in 2019, Wie West could not have imagined herself here. Chronic wrist injuries precipitated a two-year layoff that she presumed would become permanent when she became pregnant a few months after her 2019 wedding to Jonnie West, the director of basketball operations for the N.B.A.’s Golden State Warriors. She told her husband that she was done playing.“I thought there was no chance of coming back,” said Wie West. She had opportunities to move into the broadcasting booth, and motherhood seemed like a natural pivot point.“But my husband was like, ‘No, no, just think it through,’” she said.When Wie West learned that she was having a daughter, her feelings about a comeback shifted for reasons she struggled to articulate. And then in February, a month before her official return, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and asked if he could share a “funny story” about Rush Limbaugh, who had recently died.Giuliani recalled how Limbaugh had been perturbed by the photographers trailing them in a 2014 pro-am in which they were grouped with Wie West. Giuliani said that the “gorgeous” Wie West’s putting stance was attracting the photographers, who, he said, “were trying to take pictures of her panties.”Giuliani’s comments crystallized Wie West’s reasons for a comeback, irking her into action. After 25 years of speaking into a microphone as a matter of duty, Wie West realized that she actually had a lot to say, and a return to competition would give her the platform to address inequities and ignorance that she hadn’t been aware of as a teenage phenom.More affirmation came this week as she watched Naomi Osaka, another young nonwhite woman who is a star in a white-majority sport, quit the French Open rather than participate in news conferences she said were damaging to her mental health.“I thought what Naomi did this past week was incredibly brave,” said Wie West, who described her own experience with anxiety:“It’s tough, especially when you’re not doing well or there’s a lot more to life than your game. There could be other stuff happening. It is sometimes crippling at times, but I’m really proud of athletes taking charge of their mental health and making it a priority. More conversations need to be had about that.”Wie West is willing to wade into difficult conversations because she wants her daughter, Makenna Kamalei Yoona West, who will celebrate her first birthday on June 19, to grow up in a world where women athletes are seen and heard, and enjoy equal billing with men.In the past year she has revealed a different side of herself — as a leader in the drive for equity and change. With his words, Giuliani triggered Wie West’s election to the L.P.G.A. board of directors and her commitment to speak up more.“She texts me and calls me all the time,” said Heather Daly-Donofrio, a two-time tour winner who is now the L.P.G.A. chief communications and tour operations officer. “It’s great. I’ve had more conversations with her in the last two years than in her whole time on tour.”Wie West hits out of the bunker on No. 11 during the first round of the ANA Inspiration in February.Kelvin Kuo/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWie West has sought out other athletes who fought for change, including Renee Powell, one of the first African-American members of the L.P.G.A., and tennis icon Billie Jean King, who described how her threat to boycott the U.S. Open in 1973 as the defending women’s champion spurred the tournament to become the first of the Grand Slam events to pay men and women equally for their victories. Wie West has compared notes with W.N.B.A. standout and players’ association president, Nneka Ogwumike, whose undergraduate years at Stanford overlapped with hers.The conversations inspired Wie West to float the idea of forming an inter-sport council that could address the pay disparity and unequal resources between men’s and women’s sports.In 2019, the last full season before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the playing calendar, 73 women’s players exceeded $50,000 in on-course earnings. That same season on the PGA Tour, the 73rd-highest earner made $1,553,149.The golfer who wins this Sunday will take home $1 million, from $5.5 million, the largest purse on the tour. The winner of the men’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines this month will earn $2.25 million from a $12.5 million purse.Recently Wie West was reminded by her father-in-law, Jerry West, who works for the Los Angeles Clippers as a consultant, that the big money in men’s sports didn’t materialize overnight.West, the second overall pick in the 1960 draft, told her that he didn’t have an agent when he turned pro and for the duration of his first contract he held an off-season job in community relations for Great Western Savings to supplement his N.B.A. income. “He told me the N.B.A. was not something that they considered a full-time profession,” said Wie West. Like king tides, the wave that will lift all paychecks requires a perfect storm of leadership, talent, exposure, performances, marketing — to be aligned.With her 300-yard drives and fearless forays into men’s tournaments, a teenage Wie West was positioned as the game changer, the charismatic player who could take the L.P.G.A. Tour that Nancy Lopez popularized and deliver it, Tiger Woods-like, to a mainstream sports audience.Wie West was driving coverage of the women’s game before she was old enough to get behind the wheel of a car. So she was surprised when she stumbled onto the statistic recently that women are afforded roughly four percent of sports media coverage.Looking back, Wie West said, “I definitely can remember thinking, ‘Ugh, another interview. Stop talking about me.’”As a teenager, she was criticized by other golfers for hogging the spotlight, when in reality, she was attracting eyeballs that otherwise would have ignored women’s golf. Her visibility gained women’s golf new fans — and Wie West more critics. Dottie Pepper, a two-time major winner, described her in a 2007 essay published in Sports Illustrated as “overexposed, miserable and manipulated.”“I’m pretty honored that people chose to care about me,” Wie West said, “but it definitely was tough at times because I went through a lot of lows, really never a moment where I could just go under the radar.”Giuliani’s comments yanked Wie West out of her maternity leave and back into the spotlight. When she learned of his vulgar remarks, what she had lived and what she had learned recently about women’s place in the sports firmament coalesced into unadulterated outrage.Wie West said she started to tap out a social media response, “but I was so riled up, everything I was saying wasn’t really coming out right.”Her husband gently suggested that she carefully consider her message. “You have a chance to say something really important here,” Jonnie said he told her.In the response she drafted with input from her husband and posted to Twitter, Wie West said, in part, “What this person should have remembered from that day was the fact that I shot 64 and beat every male golfer in the field leading our team to victory.”When the writer Eric Adelson saw Giuliani’s comments, he recalled the men’s U.S. Open sectional in 2006, and following a 16-year-old Wie, who was the youngest competitor and only woman trying to earn a spot in the men’s field at Winged Foot.As he wrote three years later in the book, “The Sure Thing: The Making and Unmaking of Golf Phenom Michelle Wie,” he overheard an exchange between two college-aged men. One said, “Pretty swing,” to which the other responded with a crude comment about her physique.Speaking recently by telephone, Adelson said, “I remember cringing when I first heard that. I thought it was gross, and then when I heard what Giuliani said, I thought it was extremely gross.”He applauded Wie West’s response. “It just shows that she grew up,” Adelson said, “but a lot of other people didn’t.”A grown-up Wie West knows how to turn her anger into agency. She pitched a cotton candy blue-and-pink tie-dye hoodie with the L.P.G.A. logo to tour executive Roberta Bowman, who loved the idea. The limited-edition sweatshirts sold out after they were worn by Warriors players, and to Wie West’s surprised delight, the large and extra large sizes were snatched up first.Men clothed as billboards for the women’s game instead of ogling the women athletes. For Wie West, the victories don’t come much bigger than that. More