David Leadbetter clearly didn’t want Michelle Wie to play in the John Deere. “The thing I’ve tried to explain to (Wie) is that you have to work your way up the ladder,” Leadbetter told the AFP on May 4 before Team Wie told him to pipe down. “It’s all well and good to play a couple of men’s events as a novelty, now let’s look at a long-term plan.”

Wie presumably hired Leadbetter to help her make decisions on her game.

So there’s only a few ways you can take her decision - and calling it “her” decision may be a stretch, who knows for sure - to accept a sponsor’s exemption into another men’s event, the John Deere Classic.

Either Wie is a spoiled, coddled athlete who’s completely uncoachable (which would hardly make her unique in the world of pro sports) or she’s being completely coached by marketers. Did Wie just decide to discard Leadbetter’s views? (I don’t love him either, but Team Wie hired him - again you have to presume that you hire someone to actually use their expertise.) Or did a panicked group of marketing magicians (the people who made the cult of Michelle Wie in the first place) step in, realizing that if she stopped playing men’s tournaments and only kept losing women’s events that even her novelty circus act would be gone and all that would be left is a golfer clueless on winning?

Maybe Nike sees the potential for a great feel good spot. After all, if Wie doesn’t get carted out of the John Deere on a stretcher this year, that could be considered “progress.” Just think of the zany music that could accompany a scene of Michelle actually walking off the course under her own power. Maybe she could throw a Nike golf ball to a little girl, with closeups of the swoosh twirling in the air.

Just Do It. Just don’t faint.

Score? Please don’t tell me you’re talking score. You’re talking score? This is Michelle Wie. Her score doesn’t matter.

Neither, apparently, do her coach’s pleas through the press.

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