A US WOMEN'S OPEN MEDIA DAY IN LATE MAY THIS YEAR. ANY OTHER SITUATION,A ND THE SPOTLIGHT WOULD HAVE BEEN ON THE DEFENDING CHAMPION, POSSIBLE CONTENDERS, THE FIELD OF PLAY. .. But this year, there seemed to be only one topic of conversation - USGA Women's Committee Chairman Jeanne Myers' announcement that a special exemption had been extended to a teen-ager. The teenager was Michelle Wie, and the defending champion was Hilary Lunke, and the distraction was predictable, if not perhaps a little frustrating. In the media frenzy following the announcement, the polite and quiet champ had only one thing to say about Wie: "I'm just glad that nobody asked me about her." Hilary, my dear, it may have been the only 10 minutes of the past golf year that nobody did ask about her. No junior golfer -- not even Tiger Woods -- has generated as much interest as the sophomore-to-be at the Punahou School in Honolulu. Sure, Woods showed up on the Mike Douglas show just after he got out of diapers and soon turned into a bona-fide media sensation, but this golf career was at Buick-speed compared to Wie's current Lamborghini pace. "They tell me that she is technically better at 14 than Tiger Woods was," says B.J. Wie, Michelle's father, a professor of transportation at the University of Hawaii who introduced his daughter to the game when she was 7 and sensed he had something special just two months later "because she was able to play bogey golf." Hear that? She's ahead of where the world's greatest player once was, so why shouldn't she take a route never traveled, push things a bit, challenge the sport's best players right now -- whether they be male or female? "I like fast," says Michelle Wie. "I think always fast is fun. I think I always like living on the edge." Critics moan. They counter that you need to walk before you run. These folks adhere to a philosophy that contends it would be better if Wie -- whose only tournament win of note was the 2003 US Women's Public Links Championship -- were leaving junior players in her divots to build up confidence. They shake their heads at the dash-like pace being set in a game that demands a marathon-like mentality. When Michelle Wie, on the strength of a controversial special exemption, played in the US Women's Open in July, it was her 16th start in a professional tournament -- five of them having come against men. For perspective, consider that Woods played in just 14 protournaments as an amateur, none before he was 16. CRITICS Impressive stuff to some. Headshaking concern to others, like fourtime major winner Se Ri Pak. "She's a great kid, but I think she needs to enjoy her life [a little more]," says Pak, who shares a Korean heritage with Wie, though under far different circumstances. † Pak was born and raised in Korea, while Wie, whose parents (B.J. and Bo) are Korean, was born and raised in Hawaii. Pak says she didn't start playing golf until she was 14, waited until she was 18 to turn pro, and at 26 is still trying to handle the pressures of pro golf. "She's pushing so much at a young age," says Pak. "There's so much golf left and golf is the hardest sport." Which is exactly why, B.J. Wie will argue, that his only child -- she of the 6-foot frame and near-perfect long and lanky physique and 300-yard drives -- needs all this exposure to pro golf. "All of this, it's about learning the skills she needs to get better. It's all about improving," he says, walking outside the ropes during Michelle's practice round before the start of the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill. It was early May and Michelle was about to play in her third LPGA Tour event of the 2004 season, halfway to the maximum six sponsor's exemptions that she'll accept. She took all six in 2003, too, and putting her arm around her father, she tells why. "The point is to play with the best," she says, which prompts B.J. Wie to offer a reminder. "Last year, she finished even par and tied for ninth at the Kraft Nabisco. This year, she was 7- under and fourth. See -- improvement." At 43. B.J. Wie looks more like an older brother to Michelle. He got his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and has a mind for numbers, a skill he demonstrates by rattling off figures about Michelle's golf game -- fairways missed, greens that went un-hit, the average distance her approach shots came from the hole, sand-save percentage, putting average. Like a Wall Street auditor, he had numbers crunched, diced and prepared as if they had just come out of a blender. The sponsor's exemptions late last year into tournaments against the men on the Canadian PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour? Michelle Wie had rough outings and missed the cut both times, but B.J. Wie respectfully disagrees with the critics who deemed them mistakes. "No, no, not at all. She learned so much. It was good." If he did err, it was in the 2003 scheduling. Too many tournaments in a row, a situation that led to a missed cut at the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic, an LPGA Tour stop in Ohio in August, which prompted this response to a reporter's question about her emotions: "I just want to go home." "Frustration," says B.J. Wie. "She was very tired." But young teen-agers shouldn't get tired. At least that's the argument used by critics who see it as evidence that B.J. and Bo Wie are pushing their daughter too fast, too soon, and when the published reports toss around numbers in the millions of dollars -- the cash that she will command from equipment companies the minute she turns pro, say industry leaders -- the speculation becomes a game of "When will Michelle turn pro?" and everyone, it seems, is playing -- except for the kid herself. "I think big money should be handled by mature people," says Michelle. "Right now, I am a little bit too immature for that big money. I don't want to turn pro way too early." Of course, in no way is she too immature to play with the big girls -- or the big boys, for that matter. Her appearance in the PGA Tour's Sony Open at Hawaii in January included a second-round 68 as she missed the cut by just one. In 10 LPGA Tour events, Wie has finished Top 15 three times, Top 10 twice, and missed the cut just once. What's more, she is the story each and every time she shows up. Heck, she's the story even when she doesn't show up because at the McDonald's LPGA Championship in early June, with the youngster overseas playing amateur golf in the Curtis Cup, Wie questions were still being asked of players. "She's a phenom, no doubt. She's the real deal," says Meg Mallon, an 18-year veteran of the LPGA Tour. "I think we should sit back and enjoy it." Grace Park, 26 and very secure in her role as an LPGA Tour star, agrees with Mallon and is critical of the groundswell of resentment -- however small -- that is hard to miss at weekly tournaments. If too much media attention is being directed toward Wie, then so be it. "I'm sure," says Park, "that there are lot of players out here on our Tour that are envious or jealous or whatever. But play better if you want to be that person." Michelle Wie says she can't do anything about the resentment, but she insists she's not racing ahead without stopping to have a childhood. She loves the movies. She loves going to the mall with her teen-age friends. She loves talking on the phone. (But not the beach. "She's afraid of sharks," says her father.) She just happens to also be a teen-age girl who gets one-on-one instruction from David Leadbetter and a kid who can play her ball against the best-ball-of-three in a match against a trio of her father's friends. "The $5 she wins," says B.J. Wie, smiling. That's big money to her." Bigger money awaits, of course, but first things first. Michelle Wie says she can't do anything about the resentment that sits out there in LPGA Tour-land, but she's doing her best to keep the game in perspective. "Sometimes I do get a little big-headed," she says. "But then I just play a really bad shot and then I know I am a human again." HECTIC At every stop along the 2004 Michelle Wie Whirlwind Tour -- from the PGA Tour's Sony Open in January to LPGA Tour events in Arizona, Palm Springs, and Virginia, to the Curtis Cup in England -- B.J. Wie has probably felt like a person testifying before IRS auditors. How is it, folks have asked, that he and his wife can afford spend what has been reported to be at least $70,000 per year in travel expenses? Seemingly embarrassed, B.J. Wie has talked of his family's choice to live in a small condo, not a house, almost as if he has let his family down. "But we don't have a big mortage," he says. Nor does it appear as if Michelle has much of a savings account left for college, B.J. and Bo having taken the money that they had put aside for just that reason so that travel expenses can be met. He concedes that it will help if Michelle receives a college scholarship, which is as safe a bet as the sun shining at noontime on Waikiki Beach, only fewer and fewer people are expecting the teen-age phenom to play college golf. "There's going to be so much offered," says one LPGA Tour veteran. "How can she not turn pro, perhaps as soon as next year?" It won't happen that soon, or so claims B.J. Wie. He and is wife are committed to their daughter's career, but the father insists the call belongs to the kid. When pushed to make a prediction, however, B.J. Wie guesses that it wouldn't happen any earlier than after she graduates high school, which would be in the spring of 2007. "She's not interested at all [in turning pro]," he says. Then, spreading his arms to point to a velvet-green stretch of green grass at a picturesque Kingsmill golf course, B.J. Wie insisted: "She can just come here and enjoy the tournaments, without the pressure, because she's not a professional. I don't think she's ready. She wants to finish high school, then think about it. She has an option to turn professional next year, but I don't think it's a good idea." Instead, Michelle Wie will return from the Curtis Cup, take on the role of tournament defender when the WAPL is played, then compete for the second straight year in the US Women's Open. After that? There will be the US Women's Amateur, three more LPGA Tour tournaments, then a return home to her beloved Hawaii. Michelle Wie cherishes rounds of golf at her local munis -- Olomana Golf Links, Ko Olina GC, and Pearl CC -- and B.J. Wie says he will get back to his real life, his one-year sabbatical due to end in August. "Next year," he promised, "won't be this hectic." Michelle Wie, it seems, may have something to say about that. She craves challenges, invites them, and so she looks forward to a lot more of this. Why? "Because life," she says, "is a lot more fun when there's pressure on you." It's good she has that attitude. Because pressure is what she's got