Have those 45-year-old pizza delivery guys with binoculars been analyzing Michelle Wie's golf swing? (Courtesy)

Now barely legal, Michelle Wie faces Playboy choice - Sleaze on!

By Chris Baldwin,
Contributor

Let's face it, a lot of Michelle Wie's fans are the same 45-year-old creeps who watch Disney movies with the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley. As she turns 18, though, will Team Wie embrace their star's sex appeal ala Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova?

Michelle Wie turns 18 on Thursday. How soon after midnight does Hugh Hefner call?

Really what's left for the most overexposed, falsely hyped athlete in sports history to do besides pose for Playboy?

Face it, it's all a significant number of Wie "fans" are interested in anyways. Sportswriters skirt around this issue like George Bush skirts around the definition of torture. But the truth is plenty of the hoopla over Wie had to do with a thinly veiled (at best) trumped up sex appeal long before she hit legal age. Wie's marketing team put her out there as a glamorous woman and Internet creeps and Lolita-seeking college professor types alike lapped it up.

Did Wie's story of being able to stand driver-for-driver with the men - as manufactured as it was - resonate with numerous young girls and their role-model-desperate parents? Certainly. But there's also always been an unmistakable sleaze factor in her fan base.

Follow Wie at a PGA or LPGA tournament and you'll see guys who look like 45-year-old pizza delivery men checking her out with binoculars. You never want to stereotype. Maybe they're really looking for close-up swing flaws in hopes of faxing over their two cents to David Leadbetter.

And those 45-year-old guys who could be found in movie theaters watching Olsen twin Disney movies were just doing their Academy Award due diligence too.

This is why it's comical for out-of-touch sportswriters to wonder why Wie's parents are going to college with her. Or at least buying a house next door. Newsflash: It's a Facebook age where famous young women - and even some unwilling semi-famous women - in golf skirts are not allowed to live normal lives.

Heck, there is a recently graduated high school pole vaulter, Alison Stokke, who unwitting became an Internet sensation when a picture from one of her track meets was posted and now worries about stalkers. If you were Wie's dad, you might be sitting outside her dorm with a shotgun, 24-7.

Will Wie = Kournikova or Sharapova

The only fakeness here comes if Team Wie tries to deny their role in pimping Michelle as a sex symbol. There's nothing wrong with that from a free choice, marketing perspective. Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova pushed themselves on the public as potential pinup girls long before they could legally join anyone's army.

Sadly, it's still the only guaranteed way for a female athlete to receive any transcendent-star fame. Sadder still is the false hope that Wie was going to be about more.

October 10, 2007

Chris Baldwin keeps one eye on the PGA Tour and another watching golf vacation hotspots and letting travelers in on the best place to vacation.