You could see the head tilts and darting glances when people peered around Pebble Beach’s Gallery Cafe, or as visitors sat on the patio that looks toward the cypress-guarded 18th green by Stillwater Cove. They surfaced at a luncheon with Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, and during a climb up a flight of stairs, and a stroll through a lobby.
That’s Michelle Wie West, that 6-foot-1 fixture of collective memory and modern golf history.
She did not win as much as she wanted to, and certainly not as much as many people thought she would or should have. But after close to a quarter of a century in the spotlight, she is still one of the savviest stars women’s golf has ever had, a player plenty of people outside of golf know as a star even if they do not know golf.
The competitive golf part of Wie’s life will most likely be done by dusk on Sunday, when the U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to finish at Pebble Beach. If things don’t go well, and they might not since Wie West’s husband will be her caddie for the first time and she has barely played lately, it could be over by dusk on Friday. After the Open, she has no plans to return to elite competition, though she dodges the word “retirement” in public (and confesses to sometimes using it in private).
She is 33.
That…
