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Wie left looking for
another gift

THIS is why you take exemptions, if they're offered. You take them any way they come. This is why golfers tremble in fear of losing their tour card, or let out a sigh of relief when they win a tournament that comes with a 5-year grace period attached. Yesterday. That's why.

Michelle Wie failed to qualify in yesterday's first-round U.S. Open qualifier at Turtle Bay and this teaches us something, something we should have already known. You want in on a secret? Come closer. Here it is, an insider secret, an only-experts-know-this sports tip: It is harder to get to where you want to go if you have to go through a qualifying round first.

That's it. That's why you avoid these if at all possible, any way you can.

Playing your way through a qualifier, though noble, is generally a bad career move.

Think about it. How many rich, successful people say coming up the hard way is what made them what they are?

Yes. And do they give money to their own kids?

Exactly.

So you don't want to be stuck with the play-in game if you can help it. It's always better to have that first-round bye.

Otherwise the next thing you know you go out and shoot a 76 and you're out of the big dance before it even begins.

"I'm not complaining," Wie said yesterday. "I'm just so frustrated right now."

Can't blame her. Golf is a cruel game, and it struck early against her yesterday. Bogeys. In the drink. On paper, she was out of it by the time she'd made it halfway through the front nine.

"I just played great today," she said. "But nothing really turned out the way I wanted it to."

Well ...

"Great" ...

I don't know about that. The wind wasn't too bad. The scores weren't too good. Only one guy broke par, only another matched it. These guys were good golfers, but it wasn't exactly a "Big Four" field. The window was plenty open. She just shot 4 over, that's all.

That's why you skip this step if you have the means. Let's go back to the rich guy analogy again. Qualifying is for people (and this is most of us, mind you) who have to. It's for people who don't have any other choice.

Wie has been lucky. She's missed out on these preliminary steps a lot more than most. She gets a lot of breaks because somehow her profile is above that of all the other teens. She's become her own brand name.

And that has to be part of the reason she rarely plays against mere mortals these days, in qualifiers, against her own age. There's so much to lose if she has just one bad day -- and everybody can have a bad day (now even Tiger has missed the cut).

It was interesting to note that 2004 Hawaii High School Athletic Association state golf champ Britney Choy said this week in the Maui News that while Wie is great, there were a few local high school players who "could give her a run." Yesterday, maybe a few could have.

(Could they play on the LPGA Tour right now, as Wie could? No. But that's a different question.)

It's easy to see why so many people would say (and I've said it) that Wie should earn her way in, that her exemptions are unfair. They are. But that's life.

And if they offer you a gift, you take it. That's life, too.

The fewer rounds you have to go through, the easier it is to get where you want to go. That's Sports 101.

It was probably good for her in the long run, yesterday, to see how the other half lives.

Yesterday Wie stomped her foot and she held her head and she talked to her ball. And then on the back nine she made a charge, up to 4 over. Enough birdies (two) to be an alternate. She edged out two others tied at 76.

(She became second alternate when the other guys failed to show for a playoff -- which means she teed off in the day's last group and by the time she'd finished they'd both gone home).

Second alternate. It's not over yet.

"Hopefully a couple people break their legs and I can get in," Wie said.

She was joking. We think. But she'd take it.

You keep playing any way you can.

So she'll take these exemptions, if they're offered. She'll take them gladly and she'll take them smiling and she'll take them without apology.

Hopefully the only thing she won't take them is for granted. Not after yesterday. Not anymore.