Kroichick: A fine time for Wie to shine

The sporting calendar lines up neatly as women's golf launches its marquee event today on the twisting fairways and sloping greens of Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh.

The PGA Tour is quietly visiting rural Illinois before Tiger Woods and Co. convene at St. Andrew's for next week's British Open. LeBron James will announce his free-agent decision for the ages tonight on national television. Baseball's All-Star festivities do not kick into gear until Monday.

So, for one weekend, the U.S. Women's Open will seize its share of the stage -- at one of the game's most historic venues. Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller all won at Oakmont (U.S. Open), as did Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead (PGA Championship). Patty Sheehan beat Juli Inkster in a playoff the only previous time the women's Open was held there, in 1992.

This week's tournament, then, offers women's golf a chance to momentarily shed its status as a niche sport. It can cross into the mainstream with a compelling finish featuring a breakthrough victory by the one player who truly moves the needle -- yep, Michelle Wie.

She's an astonishingly polarizing figure for a 20-year-old player with one LPGA win. Anytime this column leads with Wie, the e-mails follow -- some from admirers and more from skeptics who remain oddly resentful toward her for daring to compete against men.

If it's any consolation to those folks, Wie seems done with cross-gender competition for now. She earned her LPGA card in December 2008 and turned in a strong rookie season, highlighted by her stirring performance in the Solheim Cup and inaugural tour victory in November.

That only raised expectations for 2010. Wie has responded with a distinctly ordinary season: three top-10 finishes, no wins, noticeably absent from final-round contention in the first two majors.

So this is her golden chance, right now, to pump life into the women's game.

These are strange times for the LPGA, with its cobbled-together schedule and vanishing superstars. Exactly two tournaments were held in the U.S. in the first four months of the year, making it all but impossible for fans here to follow the tour on television.

It didn't help that Lorena Ochoa followed Annika Sorenstam into early retirement, taking away the tour's two most recognizable, successful players. Then Paula Creamer had thumb surgery, removing another fan favorite (Creamer will play in the Open, though she's not 100 percent).

Other players flitted across the dance floor, from Jiyai Shin to Ai Miyazato to Cristie Kerr, who in steaming to a lopsided victory at last month's LPGA Championship, became the first American to reach No. 1 in the world since the rankings began in 2006.

That's all fine and good, but way more people will pay attention if Wie starts winning.

It might be too much to ask at hot, humid Oakmont ("It's gross," Creamer told reporters Tuesday). Wie's occasionally wayward tee shots -- she's tied for 126th on tour in driving accuracy -- could prove costly, and her sometimes shaky putting will be tested on the craziest, most undulating greens on earth.

(One side note: I sat no more than 5 feet behind the 18th green at Oakmont in 2007, when Woods lined up a double-breaking, birdie putt to force a U.S. Open playoff with Angel Cabrera. Just looking at the green nearly induced dizziness.)

Wie brings the star power the LPGA desperately needs in its post-Annika, post-Lorena era. She leads the tour in driving distance, one handy way to capture the fancy of fans. She has a well-known back-story, from 12-year-old prodigy to Stanford student, and the splash of controversy from her PGA Tour starts doesn't hurt.

She will win again. Sunday would be a fine time.

 

RICE AWAY!: Jerry Rice is back, club in hand

The Hall-of-Fame NFL receiver's fling on the Nationwide Tour earlier this year did not turn out so well, as you might recall. He shot 83-76 while serving as host of the tournament in Hayward in April, then 92-82 at another event in South Carolina -- where he was disqualified because his caddie used a range finder in the second round.

Now Rice returns to a more comfortable realm for next week's celebrity tournament on the shores of Lake Tahoe. No tour pros will join him this time, but Rice -- who finished 10th at Tahoe last year -- will be hard pressed to conquer a field including Rick Rhoden, Dan Quinn and Tony Romo.

"I hope to be in the top five -- that's what I'm shooting for," Rice said on a conference call Wednesday. "If I play well, maybe I'll have a chance to win. It's going to be very competitive."

(E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick(at)sfchronicle.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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