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Michelle Wie West Was Ready to Retire. Then She Got Mad.
Source: New York Times
Michelle Wie West Was Ready to Retire. Then She Got Mad.
A golf phenom since she was 10, Michelle Wie West was ready to focus on motherhood. Rudy Giuliani’s vulgar remarks convinced her that she should keep fighting and playing.
By Karen Crouse
June 3, 2021
-snip-
When Wie West learned that she was having a daughter, her feelings about a comeback shifted for reasons she struggled to articulate. And then in February, a month before her official return, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and asked if he could share a “funny story” about Rush Limbaugh, who had recently died.
Giuliani recalled how Limbaugh had been perturbed by the photographers trailing them in a 2014 pro-am in which they were grouped with Wie West. Giuliani said that the “gorgeous” Wie West’s putting stance was attracting the photographers, who, he said, “were trying to take pictures of her panties.”
Giuliani’s comments crystallized Wie West’s reasons for a comeback, irking her into action. After 25 years of speaking into a microphone as a matter of duty, Wie West realized that she actually had a lot to say, and a return to competition would give her the platform to address inequities and ignorance that she hadn’t been aware of as a teenage phenom.
More affirmation came this week as she watched Naomi Osaka, another young nonwhite woman who is a star in a white-majority sport, quit the French Open rather than participate in news conferences she said were damaging to her mental health.
“I thought what Naomi did this past week was incredibly brave,” said Wie West, who described her own experience with anxiety:
-snip-
A golf phenom since she was 10, Michelle Wie West was ready to focus on motherhood. Rudy Giuliani’s vulgar remarks convinced her that she should keep fighting and playing.
By Karen Crouse
June 3, 2021
-snip-
When Wie West learned that she was having a daughter, her feelings about a comeback shifted for reasons she struggled to articulate. And then in February, a month before her official return, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and asked if he could share a “funny story” about Rush Limbaugh, who had recently died.
Giuliani recalled how Limbaugh had been perturbed by the photographers trailing them in a 2014 pro-am in which they were grouped with Wie West. Giuliani said that the “gorgeous” Wie West’s putting stance was attracting the photographers, who, he said, “were trying to take pictures of her panties.”
Giuliani’s comments crystallized Wie West’s reasons for a comeback, irking her into action. After 25 years of speaking into a microphone as a matter of duty, Wie West realized that she actually had a lot to say, and a return to competition would give her the platform to address inequities and ignorance that she hadn’t been aware of as a teenage phenom.
More affirmation came this week as she watched Naomi Osaka, another young nonwhite woman who is a star in a white-majority sport, quit the French Open rather than participate in news conferences she said were damaging to her mental health.
“I thought what Naomi did this past week was incredibly brave,” said Wie West, who described her own experience with anxiety:
-snip-
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/sports/golf/lpga-michelle-wie-us-open.html