I know, I know, people will read this post and think it’s the big bad Great White Shank ganging up on poor little Michelle Wie again. Believe me, I’m not. It’s just that when I see someone far more talented and proficient at the game of golf than I am (exponentially so!) struggle on a golf course – well, I can’t help but think there may be such a thing as justice in this world after all. Check out this story regarding the teen phenom‘s play Friday at the Samsung World Championship, where she began her second year as a pro on the LPGA Tour. I particularly enjoyed this part of the story (my bolds):

Her ball was nestled against a rock the size of a baseball, with waist-high bushes all around as Michelle Wie stood in the middle of the desert and tried to figure out what to do.

She had nowhere to go — and neither did anyone behind her.

She took a free drop into the desert sand behind a small tree. She whiffed. She tried again, advancing the ball into a thicket that left her no choice but to take a penalty drop. If that wasn’t enough, she had to hit her next shot off a cement cart path.

All that just to get back to the fairway.

“It was a really, really bad situation to be in,” Wie said. “There was no bailout.”

She wound up with a quadruple-bogey 8 on the 14th hole at Bighorn — the shortest par 4 on the course at 354 yards — and finished with a 2-over 74 to match her worst score of the year on the LPGA Tour.
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In hindsight, she would have been better off going back to the tee and hitting her third shot. At the time, Wie thought she could escape with her free drop into the desert sand. She didn’t realize the wind was keeping the branches out of her way, but then the wind died, and the branches were right in front of her.

“I had to wait for the tree to blow back. ‘All right, the tree is out of my way, hit it!”‘ she said.

In her haste, she missed it all together.

In the scoring tent, there was confusion over the score until Cristie Kerr took over and went through all eight strokes. “Ocho,” she said. The walking scorer said, “I thought she got free relief from the bush because of bees.”

“No,” Wie said. “That was last year.”

A year ago, Wie showed savvy with the rule book by getting relief from a swarm of honey bees. The more infamous ruling was a bad drop in the third round that wasn’t reported until the fourth round and led to her disqualification.

Boy, I’m reading this article and thinking, “Holy ball washer, that last conversation sounds like something you’d hear after a round at the Goodboys Invitational!” – something that would undoubtedly go something like this:

Steve “Killer” Kowalski: “Hey, Shank, didn’t you get free relief from the bush because your ball skipped off the pond, hit a golf cart, scattered a flock of geese, bounced against the clubhouse, then came to rest between that sand trap rake and the stone wall?”

The Great White Shank: “No, that was last year.”

Hmmm. All I can say is, Michelle, welcome to the world of The Great White Shank. Just don’t stay there too long. I can’t say I know how you feel, but I defintely know what it’s like. Here’s hoping you can shake off these kinds of bizarre occurrences better than I can and go on to have yourself a good tournament. I’m sure you will – you’re too good a player to do otherwise.

But then again, these kinds of things can be awfully catchy…