Michelle Wie is actually playing golf in a tournament–and leading. She’s tied for first in the SBS Open at Turtle Bay, opening the LPGA season in her home state of Hawai’i. She’s currently one under par through five after shooting a 66 yesterday. She’s getting a lot of support from golf enthusiasts and 40-year-old businessmen everywhere, like Roy S. Johnson (the S stands for “Yellow Fever”).

She deserves to win. It wasn’t fully her fault that she was thrust into the “next Tiger Woods” vortex way too prematurely. Nor that her money-grubbing team seemed to make every wrong decision for her game and growth while making every “right” decision for her bank account.

Through it all, Wie kept swinging that big, bold swing that is her hallmark. A swing so big her team thought pitting her against men was a bright idea. (See previous paragraph, last sentence.)

The LPGA needs a successful Wie more now than ever before. With Annika Sorenstam now in retirement and a cadre of hot twentysomething white girls with relatively low star power, Wie could be the headliner that her tour currently doesn’t have. Guys don’t fly to Thailand to get it on with white girls. They go to get robbed blind and oppressingly humiliated. That’s what this brochure says, anyway.