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CN CANADIAN WOMEN'S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPAugust 14, 2007Michelle Wie WestEDMONTON, ALBERTA THE MODERATOR: Thank you for coming in. You have a great following. Anxious to hear about how you're doing. You spent a couple weeks over in Europe and now you're playing your first professional tournament in Canada. How is the course setting up for you this week? MICHELLE WIE: It's really nice. It's always great to come back. I came to Canada for the first time about like four years ago, five years ago. I had a tournament in Michigan and we drove up and came. People told us that you only needed a driver's license to come to Canada. So I have really fond memories of coming to Canada. It was okay coming into Canada, but coming back to America they stopped us, and they were like, we need your passports. We were like, okay, we don't have our passports. Oh, shoot, we're in trouble. I just remember the whole thing being a complete disaster. But it's great coming back here. I mean, the people are really nice. It was a little bit colder than I expected, but watched a lot of great movies, ate at a lot of great restaurants and got lost on the roads here, but everything was pretty cool. Q. Are you playing pain-free now? What is the story with your wrist? MICHELLE WIE: It's a lot better. It's almost pain-free, but obviously when I hit a bad shot or when it's really cold, it stings a little bit. But it's a lot better. It's still a little weaker than I want it to be, but it's definitely on the right road to recovery, and I'm getting it stronger, definitely getting it pain-free. I'm getting better and better. Q. What's it like being a 17-year-old with the pressure to play? It's not a team sport where you can count on teammates to help you out, you're out there by yourself. MICHELLE WIE: That's the same question they asked me when I first came out, how does it feel to be a 12-year-old playing with the pressures to play well. It's the same thing. I've been dealing with it since I was 12, 11, 10. At some point it's hard. You know, it's hard to play with the pressure, it's hard to be stressed out all the time. But fortunately I have a lot of things that I back up on, a lot of things that I find a lot of joy in. Like I went to a regular high school, that took a lot of pressure off of me, and now I'm really looking forward to college. I'm really looking forward to Stanford, and that also takes a lot of pressure, not thinking about golf. Obviously the pressure is tough, but I'm good at pressure and I took that on when I played golf, and I have a lot of things I can fall back on. Q. Would it be easier if you were playing a team sport like a lot of players that enter the NBA or baseball or hockey and they have teammates to fall back on if things aren't going well? MICHELLE WIE: Well, I don't think so. I don't know, I never really played a team sport. I quit all team sports when I was about five, so I don't really vividly remember playing team sports. You know, I don't really think so. I have people that I fall back on, too. You know, I rely on my parents, I rely on my managers, I rely on my friends. They're the people that I fall back on because when I get really stressed out, they really help me get through it. I guess that's what teammates do. But even in a team sport you have to perform. Q. I'm just wondering with the struggles this year, how has it changed your approach to a tournament like this mentally and have the struggles changed your game at all? MICHELLE WIE: Obviously I haven't really been playing my game the way I wanted to because of the restrictions that I have on my body with my wrist and everything. Unfortunately I haven't been able to play the way I wanted to. But that's the way golf is. That's the way life is. You have good moments and then you have to have bad moments. But it all depends on how you tackle the bad moments. I feel like this summer and this whole year is going to make me a stronger person and a stronger player because of all the hardships that I had to overcome. I feel like I'm definitely on the road to recovery, I just have to be patient with myself and just have to ask everyone to be patient with me, as well, because it is a hard thing come back from an injury. It is a harder thing than I thought. I have to just be patient with myself. Q. Have you ever met Wayne Gretzky? The reason I bring this up is he went through the same sort of thing as you at an early age. Have you had a chance to compare notes with him, that sort of thing? Are you going to get to talk to him and see what he went through? MICHELLE WIE: I don't know, but I hope I get to meet him. I'm a huge fan. I don't really know hockey but I know who he is. You know, I think it's really cool what he did and that he just kept through it and had a really good career. I really respect that. I hope I get to meet him tomorrow. Q. I wonder despite your age you've dealt with so much attention for so many years. Did you think it would be at all different coming to Canada because you haven't really been here before except for your trip with the passports? And does this ever get tiresome for you, or do you just learn to deal with it, deal with the good and maybe block out anything negative that might be there? MICHELLE WIE: Yeah, I mean, coming to Canada playing a tournament, I just feel so honored to be here because it's just great because golf has brought me to see so many places, and if I hadn't played golf I'd probably be in Hawaii all my life, not going anywhere and not traveling and not being able to experience all the great experiences that I have. I feel very honored that golf has chosen me to play and that it brought me to different kinds of places, Canada, Europe, Asia, different parts of America. I think it's great. I think that it's going to be a good week, I have a feeling. Q. A couple weeks back David Leadbetter was quoted as sort of questioning the way you've gone about the rehabilitation of this injury. Looking back on the way it's gone, is there something you would have done differently in the way you've approached it? MICHELLE WIE: Obviously looking back at it now, there's a lot of moments in my life that I want to redo. But that's in the past. It's not going to make -- you're not going to be able to have a second chance at it. I mean, I'm not going to break my wrist again and do it over the right way. So I might as well move forward, forget about the past and believe in myself 100 percent, whether or not I'm doing the right thing or not. I'd rather believe in myself 100 percent and do the wrong thing rather than do the right thing and not believe in myself 100 percent. People have different opinions, and I respect David Leadbetter. I've worked with him, co-worked with him on a tactic he had, but unfortunately summer came a little bit too quickly. Summer came in December, not in June or May. But that's just the way life is. Sometimes you've got to grind it and play through it, and I feel like I'm definitely on the road to recovery. Q. Learning what you learned, would you have sat out longer do you think if something like that happened again? MICHELLE WIE: I don't think it's going to happen again. I don't really want to think about it. I think I had the choices that I had to make, and whether or not it was the right choice, it was the choice I made. Obviously there are a couple things I want to redo, but I believe in myself 100 percent, and I think that was the most important thing. Q. You've taken a different road than many other golfers in terms of your development. Are you happy with the way things have gone, or looking back now would you have maybe taken a different road in terms of being successful as a pro? MICHELLE WIE: No, I'm very happy with the way my career has gone so far. I don't think I would have made any different choices. I feel like me and my team and my family and everyone supported me in my decisions that I made. And like I said, there is no chance to do it -- there's no redo's in this life. There's no, oh, I wish I would have done this differently. If I wake up one morning and say I want to do something completely different with my career, it's going to be really weird because I don't believe in it; even if everyone says this is the right way, you should do that, you should do that, and everyone says it, but if I don't feel it then I can't do it because I don't believe in it. I feel like I'm on the right road. Obviously people are second-guessing my choices because of how I played this year. But like I said, I wasn't at 100 percent this whole year, so I don't count this year basically. I think that, like I said, this year was a really hard year. It was actually my first hard year I've ever experienced as a player. I think it's going to make me a stronger player. I just have to get through it and be patient with myself. Q. Can you talk about missing the cut at St. Andrews? And for this tournament will you block that out and will you try and perhaps draw something from it to try and give yourself an edge in this tournament? MICHELLE WIE: Well, like I said, I felt like during the Evian and during the British Open I played probably 500 percent better than I had the whole summer and the whole year. And like I said, I achieved a lot of my goals. Like I played almost pain-free, I was a lot stronger. And even though I missed the cut, I felt like I played a lot better. I'm at a place in the rehab process where I'm starting to not work around my pain. I'm able to face the pain straight on because my wrist isn't hurting as much. Sometimes I have it, sometimes I'm not until I fully get it. But the second round at St. Andrews, I hit 13 fairways, and I think that's a huge step for me, step forward, because obviously this whole year my driver has not been consistent at all. You know, I gained a lot of confidence playing that week. My driver was really solid, my irons were really solid. I can actually shape the ball the last -- at the British Open. So it's a definite step forward. But obviously it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. I'm just going to block that out, play this week. This week is a completely different week and a completely different place. I enjoyed St. Andrews, and I'm going to enjoy this week, too. Q. What percentage are you playing at right now? What are your expectations coming into the tournament? Where do you hope to finish? MICHELLE WIE: You know, I don't really know what percentage I am, really. It's a day-by-day kind of feel where I wake up and I feel good. But I hope -- I just want to have fun this week and play without pressure and just -- play the way I used to play, just have fun and play pain-free. Q. Here in Edmonton and in Alberta the number of young female golfers is pretty drastically down. I wonder if you've ever taken time to step back and consider not only here but everywhere the type of impact that you might be making, the spotlight that's on you? MICHELLE WIE: You know, I don't know really. You know, golf is a great sport. I think that a lot of girls don't realize that, but it actually is a sport. I think the problem is that girls have the misconception that golf is an old man's game, you have to wear ugly outfits and you don't do any cardio and you won't lose any weight. But you get to wear cute outfits, you have to walk for four hours, which is a lot of hard work, and you do get to lose weight. You actually do lose some weight in the summer. So it's a positive. I think the idea is to make young girls think that, and hopefully I do have a positive impact. That's all I can hope for. Q. I wonder, you get so many questions about so many different things. How would a victory kind of maybe change your life or maybe change the focus of your life from the outside if people would maybe just talk about your golf game and not everything else? MICHELLE WIE: Well, I can't control what everyone thinks about me. I'm not God; I can't be like, oh, you can't think about that, you can only think about my golf. I can't do that. It's impossible. People have their own opinion and I really respect that. I have to say a victory would be pretty sweet. I'm looking forward to that day, and I'm going to savor it. I'm just going to work really hard to get at it. But I can't control people. That's life. Q. Is making a PGA cut still something you're going to try to do in the future or is that something that's on hold? And if yes, why; if no, why? MICHELLE WIE: Okay, definitely I do want to -- definitely that is still part of my goal plan. That's the reason why I started playing golf, and that's the reason why I'm going to keep playing golf obviously. Obviously winning on the LPGA is also very important to me, but making the cut on the PGA is also very important to me, as well. I think my main goal is to just be happy as a person, and if making the cut on the PGA does that, great. If going to school and having fun at college does that, that's great, too. If it's winning on the LPGA, that's great, too. So I have a lot of goals for myself. But the most important thing is for me to be happy, and I think I'm doing that. Q. I just wanted to know, you've played all over the world, fabulous courses. How does this one rate? MICHELLE WIE: I think it's definitely one of my top favorites because the golf course -- number one, the condition is awesome. I've never really seen a brown spot on this golf course. And also the layout is awesome. I really like the course design and the green shape and everything. I just feel so welcome here. The people are just so nice here that they also boost up the element of the golf course, as well. When I walked into the golf club, everything was very welcoming and made me feel really good. I really like this place. THE MODERATOR: Michelle, thank you. Good luck this week. End of FastScripts |
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