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Golf can remain
Wie’s hobby

THE thing that comes to mind in all this accepted-as-gospel speculation that Michelle Wie will turn pro soon -- maybe even as soon as this week -- isn't that the playing at Stanford thing seems to have been pitched to the side.

That's probably been off the table for a while. Maybe as soon as it dawned on her that in college they'd actually make her play on the women's team.

And it isn't that, rather than signing up with a traditional Jerry Maguire-type sports agent, everyone expects her to ink a deal with the much more Hollywood-aligned William Morris Agency of Beverly Hills.

Though it does make you wonder: What -- will she be reviewing movie scripts?

No, the thing that hits you is this:

They're not going to be giving her what most reports agree will be something in the neighborhood of $8 million a year to play golf.

They're doing it because she's Michelle Wie.

Now, yes, you bet, Wie is a terrific golfer. In the grand scheme of things, a great one. This season alone, she would have earned more than $600,000 in LPGA-event prize money had she been a pro, and that's just as a part-time player. She has an incredible swing. Everybody says so.

But if we're talking playing golf, Morgan Pressel is the more accomplished high-school girl prodigy. And Paula (Rhymes with "Gamer") Creamer has already won two LPGA events as a teen.

And nobody's throwing them six zeroes. (And Annika Sorenstam, perhaps the best ever, wouldn't see Wie money in her wildest dreams.)

Wie's nice drives go longer, and that's exciting. But not $8 million exciting.

And, yes, she's a couple of years younger than those other girls. But these days teen sensations are like buses -- another one pulls up every 10 minutes.

Yet this upcoming contract, if true, would hammer home the point that Wie has been hitting us with for years:

All these other girls might be great golfers. None of them is Michelle Wie.

That's the thing. She's done it.

Michelle Wie doesn't need an agent. In fact, they should pay her. (Oh, wait. They are.)

Few professional athletes -- or even politicians, for that matter -- have been able to craft an image, create a name brand, the way this soon-to-be-16-year-old girl has.

Those Hollywood agents she's about to hire could learn from her.

Those other girls are arguably just as good at golf. Or better.

But they don't pay you $8 million for winning women's golf tournaments.

They do, somehow, pay that much for being Michelle Wie.

It's an amazing thing, that she's done this. That she's separated herself from every other teen dream. That she's become the golden child, the chosen one, the one to hang out with Paul Shaffer and Dave one night and Diane Sawyer the next day. How? The Creamers and the Pressels and all the other teens are still wondering what she has that they don't.

The question actually came up in February, at the SBS Open at Turtle Bay, and Wie said, "Well, I just think that I am a little bit different person. There are not a lot of 15-year-olds that are 6-foot tall."

And I used this line then, but please indulge me, let me write it again -- it struck me it sounded just like Ty Webb in "Caddyshack": "How do you measure yourself against other golfers?" "By height."

But it's worked. She's stayed on message, been relentless. She is different from everyone else. She is different. She is different.

"I guess I'm a little different," she told Golf for Women last year. "I think being unique is different."

Her peers were busy trying to win golf tournaments. Anyone could, like, go that route. But she didn't want to, didn't have to. Wie would be -- here's that word again -- different. She'd play against men. She'd shoot for the moon.

Some wonder why she hasn't won. Wie spins it as being too busy blazing trails.

She'll shoot for the Masters!

We've accused her of tilting at windmills, of going for moral victories, and always falling just short.

But somehow she knew there was magic in that.

And every time she showed up to play the earth moved, there's no denying it. There's been nobody better at baiting buzz and building a bandwagon and creating a name brand. She connects. She's so good at this stuff, the agents are about to pay her.

She's different, all right. Sometime in the next few weeks she'll be $8 million worth of different.

And when that day comes all the ones who have won will wonder when their millions are coming.

But they're not paying her to play golf, not really.

The Ty Webb comparison is apt after all. It's the "Chevy Chase Factor."

She's Michelle Wie.

And you're not.