Reader calls Baldwin's bluff on Wie, Creamer (to the tune of $1,000!)

Bad bet. Dumb bet. What difference will it make who won earlier in their careers? Look at Nicklaus/Player/Palmer with the ten year age spread. For most of the 60s they went head to head and nobody cared about their ages until the older guys started playing worse.

The real bet is on tournaments where they are both in the field, how many will either of them win?

To the clueless Shanks, this IS the argument. Baldwin asserts that Creamer is better now, and will always be better than Wie. If Wie wins her first LPGA tournament at a younger age, how can he assert that? It is such a bad, dumb bet, that I will throw in $1,000 more and see if Baldwin will put his money where his mouth is.

Wrong, Wong. Head to head, who wins the most tourneys.

A bet is only dumb if you are likely to lose. The bet Jim was proposing is very safe.
What you have to realize is that Wie doesn't give a shit about Creamer or any other golfer on the LPGA. She isn't going to waste her life chasing records like Tiger.
I think she will enjoy her career immensely picking and choosing the events she plays in.
She will earn enough money in her first year to keep her happy for the rest of her life.
By the time she is 20 she will have probably grossed between 50 and 100 million.
I believe a lot of people are anti-Wie because of this, especially poor Presell.
Alan M

Money will not make her happy. Money is nice, sure, but there are a lot of miserable rich people in the world. She appears to be a very driven young woman and will likely never be happier than if she learns to be a champion, as it appears she might one day (maybe even soon).

People, people, we're losing our main focus here. The bet on the table should be who will look better at age 30. That's a real bet. Who cares about what age someone is when winning an LPGA tourney? Granted these ladies are awesome golfers, they could destroy me easily. Nevertheless the LPGA has been going through a transformation of sorts lately. From caterpillar to butterfly, the LPGA has shown us some remarkable talent provided by some remarkable looking ladies. So as long as there are butterflies I’ll be watching. I won't really care how old the winner is I'll just admire their game.

OK, Shanks, you're on! Compare the head to head finishes between Wie and Creamer this year. Wie came out ahead more often. Now, you're going to say, that Creamer won one and Wie only came in T-2. I say winning one tournament is overrated. Would you say that Birdie Kim is a better golfer than Wie? Except for the one win, Kim had only one other top 10 finish and missed the cut in almost a third of her tournaments. Wie missed only one cut in the past 3 years. Do you think Hillary Lunke is a better golfer than Wie? Don't know Lunke? She won the Woman's Open in 2003. Besides that one win, her best finish over 3 years on the LPGA was 18th. I am sure there are other One Week Wonders with 1 or 2 LPGA wins but nobody, except maybe their mothers, would say they are better than Wie.

I admire and admit that Creamer will be a top contender for many years to come but to assert, like Baldwin, that she will always be better than Wie remains to be seen. I think Wie getting a win 2 years younger than Creamer will be good evidence.
So, Shanks, looks like you shanked another one!

VW,

Hey man, your nickname should be Bug ... get it? ... VW Bug!

Anyway, I disagree that winning is overrated. And so do all big-time golfers. They would much rather have wins than say "I finished higher than you did more often ... nya, nya, nya." Being able to win is something to be learned unless you are like Lunke, who was that rare exception to win that Open by catching lightning in a bottle. Did you watch it? She only putted about 21 times in the final round. Unbelievable. Kind of like Orville Moody, who won the US Open for his only title of his career. It happens.

I've stated my opinion on Wie in other posts but since you seem to be new I'll do it one more time. She's awesome. She has enough talent to have won this year already. But she's lacking a little bit of emotional maturity to win (or make the cut in a mens event). I think she will get past this last hurdle eventually, maybe even soon. Then look out.

Creamer is better than Wie is right now because she knows how to close the deal when she gets in the hunt. Don't underestimate what it takes to handle your nerves coming down the stretch. By the way, she won THREE professional tournaments this year, 2 of them LPGA events. And she performed magnificently in the Solheim Cup, probably the most nerve-wracking event that female golfers ever encounter. That's a little more than lightning in a bottle.

Shanks, look at Wie vs. Creamer (sounds like Roe vs Wade) in tournaments they both played this year. Wie did better by almost every measure. Higher average finish. Lower average score. More top twos, top threes, top fives, top tens, top twenties. Higher earnings, if Wie had accepted prize money. It was not even close.

In fact, Wie outperformed every LPGA player in those tournaments but one: Annika. i.e. a 15-year-old girl beat up on all the best female players in the world, except the best LPGA player of our time. (And perhaps the greatest LPGA player of all time.)

Creamer and Wie are incredibly exciting for women's golf. But for long-term potential, IMO Wie is in a class of her own.

Jim,

No argument on those stats. My point in all of this is that Creamer had a better year because she won multiple tournaments. I think Wie has the talent to win now - your stats back that up - but is lacking the ability to handle her emotions enough to actually win. She has not yet performed at that high level when in position to win. I feel that is primarily due to her age and she will get past it sooner or later. All of the greats have had to learn how to do this, usually by failures.

Wie hasn't won anything in over 2 years, including amateur events. Everybody who posts on this site seems to underestimate that quality. While it is likely, it is not a foregone conclusion that she will get over this last hurdle.

Shanks, Creamer played nearly 3 times as many events this year as Wie did. We'll never know how Wie would have done, had she played a full year, like Creamer did.

But consider that of the seven events she has played -- the toughest on tour -- Wie has 3 seconds and a third. She has the best birdie percentage on tour, the second or third best scoring average, the second-best performance in majors, the second-best earnings per tournament (had she accepted prize money).

So I like her odds pretty well of winning over a full season.

I 100% agree Wie will have to start winning, and pretty soon. Not winning this year means little, though. She proved herself at age 15 to be one of the two or three best women players in the world -- and IMO the best by far on men's-length courses.

Jim,

Your stats are correct. Wie played extremely well. I love Wie's game and expect her to become a superstar.

But we're talking about the year 2005. Creamer won 2 tour events and another event in Asia, all against professionals. Michelle did not win a single event she entered. So, IMO, she had a better year. Perhaps next year will be a different story.

Success is defined by winning. The top players in the game have said that forever. For the most recent example, do you think Tiger is happy with a top 5 or does he look at it as a squandered opportunity?

At a younger age, I used to go to the racetrack with a wise old co-worker who spent a good part of his life at the races. He always said, looking at the racing form "a horse winning in 1 minute 2 seconds is better than another one in another race finishing close second in 1 minute 1 second.

Leading and winning is much tougher than following and ending in a flourish behind someone else. That is why the wins are the only significant stats.

The difference between first and second is ten times bigger than between second and third.

Shanks said:
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Success is defined by winning. The top players in the game have said that forever. For the most recent example, do you think Tiger is happy with a top 5 or does he look at it as a squandered opportunity?
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For Tiger Woods, a top 5 finish is pretty ordinary and HE will be disappointed not to win. This is because he has won so many times that another top 5 is no big deal.

Comparing him to Michelle is like comparing apples to oranges.

Michelle is coming from the position of having made her debut not that long ago. First it took her 4 LPGA tournaments to make a cut. Then she gradually got better and got some higher finishes. This year she far exceeded any reasonable thinking persons expectations by moving to the stage of actually competing for LPGA majors.

Giving this and her age and how many tournaments she has played, she would be and should be delighted with her season. It is all progress towards the final objective which is indeed winning, as you stated. However just because winning is the number 1 goal, does not mean that everything else is pointless, for example finishing 2nd.

Never said anything like "everything else is pointless". I'm just saying what is BETTER.

Winning is the goal of everyone who tees it up, regardless what the norm is for them. The ones that win, and especially win multiple times, we say they are better. When the players themselves vote for player of the year, what do you think is the number one criteria? If Wie had been a LPGA member, who do you think would've gotten more P-O-Y votes based on the year they had, her or Creamer????

Shanks, if Wie had been an LPGA member, she probably would have played 20 tournaments or more. Just like Creamer did. Instead she only played seven. Based on her performance in those seven -- the toughest on tour, with the best fields -- it seems real likely that she would have won at least one tournament. Maybe more.

This is the problem trying to compare the two golfers, if you only look at the LPGA. Wie played a small fraction of the events Creamer did. Michelle outplayed Paula in those tournaments. Not just by a little but by a lot. And of course she made history in the men's tournaments she played.

Put the two of them in men's tournies and it's no contest. Put them in women's tournies, and Wie has outplayed Creamer by a wide margin. And Creamer is a genuine star, one of the top four women golfers in the world!

A 15 year old girl is challenging some basic assumptions about gender. The world knows it, and is fascinated. That is why she, not Creamer, is getting the multi-zillion dollar contracts.

Shanks said:
If Wie had been a LPGA member, who do you think would've gotten more P-O-Y votes based on the year they had, her or Creamer????
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Basically I cannot answer that accurately because if Michelle had been a member of the LPGA, she would have played many more tournaments.
Having only played 7 tournaments, it would be impossible to vote for her, but if she had over 20, then it would be judged on how she did in them all.

In my opinion, if she played 20 tournaments in the LPGA in the season I would find it very difficult not to see her winning at least a couple.
Keep in mind she played in the biggest tournaments with all the biggest stars. If she played in 20 tournaments, some of them would have not contained many big players and her chances of winning would have been greatly improved.

So in short to answer your question, it depends on how she wouldn've done in the other tournaments.

PS: I would vote Creamer as one of the top players of the year. Obviously Annika has to get the vote for POY, due to 2 majors and other titles but of the others Creamer is definetely near the top.

Thank you, Norman. Obviously we can only go on what they actually played, which makes up their year .... 3 wins to zero wins .... easy call for most.

And just so you know, I hope Wie is able to realize her potential sooner rather than later. That would really shake things up. The LPGA might have to revisit their eligibilty requirements ... even tho they have a little gray area in those rules for special circumstances.

Lets have a competition in the PGA.

Tiger versus Vijay.
Let Tiger play 20 events
Let Vijay play 7 events.

Let the one with the most wins be the best player. Is this fair? No obviously not.
Substitute the names Creamer and Wie and it is still unfair.

Memo to Norman

Sorry your parents didn't tell you this but ... Life is not fair. Creamer wins 3 pro events and Wie wins nothing, pro or amateur. Creamer has the better year, period. End of story.

Oh .... so you are saying it's unfair.

I guess that's big of you. Well done.

You are welcome.

shanks ... you idiot. Stop posting.

A very witty retort, ads .... Yale or Harvard?