Michelle Wie won the LPGA’s Lotte Tournament here on Oahu today, her third career win and first in four years. This made her local fans very very happy, and she was pretty pleased herself.
I’m so happy I can’t think straight,” Wie said. “I love everybody here in Hawaii and celebrating tonight is going to be fun. I’m so proud of myself. I had a blast out there today. It was fun.”
She’s having even more fun: tonight she’s hosting (and competing in) a charity ping pong tournament to benefit the Hawai’i Junior Golf Association, and after that she’s hosting an afterparty to follow the second of three Bruno Mars concerts at the Blaisdell Arena downtown.
The fundraising idea was dreamed up by Ko Olina director of golf Greg Nichols, who saw Wie’s passion for Ping-Pong at another fundraiser last year. He proposed it and the board loved it.
So did Rolfing and HSJGA president Mary Bea Porter-King, once they got past the initial shock.
“I was blown away,” Porter-King admits.
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Each pro will play Ping-Pong with two amateurs. The board is sending out invites and expects to sell out the 260 tickets — for playing, eating and spectating — easily.
Wie is bringing seven of her LPGA buddies, including Lydia Ko, Christina Kim, Cristie Kerr and Yani Tseng, for this new-breed Pro-Am.
“Michelle’s and the HSJGA’s only prerequisites are that the player has to have game,” Nichols says, “and is fun to be around. And, of course, wants to help give back to the game.”
Wie has been a celebrity in Hawai’i for nearly fifteen years. She qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links when she was 10 (she’s 24 now), and she has had ups and downs on the golf course ever since. But she graduated from Stanford in June of 2012 and has been improving since she started playing almost full time. We take a proprietary interest in her out here, remembering that little kid who was beating everyone in sight at such an early age.