Michele Wie becomes marketer’s dream, golf waits for its turn

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: Michelle Wie was 23rd at the US Women’s Open last month and on Friday lost her chance for an invitation to next year’s PGA Masters, yet at 15, she is the golfer that sports marketers have their eyes on.

Advertisers say that what differentiates Wie from such competitors as say, Birdie Kim, 23, the winner of the Women’s Open, and Brittany Lang, 19, and Morgan Pressel, 17, who tied for second place, is Wie’s blossoming talent, her personality and her determination to compete with male golfers. No woman has survived elimination on the PGA, the men’s golf tour, since Babe Didrikson Zaharias did it in the 1945 Tucson Open.

But Wie, from Honolulu, has made changing that her quest. Wie, who made history last week as the first woman to qualify for the men’s US Amateur Public Links Championship, is generating a following that one marketer called “Michelle mania.” “She’s very much focused at competing not at the top of the women’s world, but at the top of the golf world,” said Peter Stern, president of the Strategic Sports Group in New York. “She’s a great sports story.”

Advertisers and network executives said that Wie could increase interest in golf and command large endorsement deals on a par with the tennis stars Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams, who are each earning about $20 million this year. Tiger Woods earns about $80 million a year in endorsements.

The question is whether a female golfer could reach that level. “There’s a lot of speculation that she is to women’s golf what Tiger was to men’s golf,” said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. “As Tiger has moved past that and has just been good for the game of golf, in some many ways I think Michelle will hopefully have the ability to transcend her gender and just be a golfer.”

If she survives elimination in the next few years in a PGA Tour event, Wie would be good at reaching young women and girls, marketers said. “She’s their age and watching her compete with, and in some cases beat, men is pretty inspiring,” said Jim Brighters, golf editor for the Sports Network, an international sports wire service based in Hatboro, Pa.