Following on from there, Leadbetter says he had no problem in understanding why Michelle yearned for more invitations from the men after missing the cut at the Sony by a single shot. She eventually had the satisfaction of making a cut in Korea, but such was the mounting pressure and criticism back in the States that she played worse rather than better and took it upon herself to call a halt to the experiment.
Not, mind you, that she had any regrets; she was proud of the way she had "thought out of the box".
When it comes to the technical side of the game, Leadbetter and the Wie’s modus operandi is as follows. Since Michelle is not remotely interested in looking at videos of her swing, she is happy for her father, an engineer, to do it for her. Hence the reason that Leadbetter and BJ will confer over the swing sequences in order that BJ can keep an eye on whether Michelle is making a good fist of interpreting what Leadbetter wants her to do.
In contrast to the above, Leadbetter confirms that Michelle’s "table-top" putting stance is entirely down to her. She had been pondering on all those smaller Asian golfers whose putting statistics were so much better than the norm and eventually she came to the conclusion that they benefited from being closer to the ground. Wie, who likened herself to "a bendy flag-stick" when the wind was playing up during the Women's British Open two years ago, started experimenting with her new method in Dubai towards the end of 2013.
Leadbetter had been around far too long to throw up his hands in horror. After all, he had seen plenty of weird and wonderful putting styles across the years which worked perfectly well - Jack Nicklaus’s for one.
"Jack," says Leadbetter, "wasn’t exactly orthodox in the way he was bent over and crab-like over the ball but no one was going to tell him that it wasn’t right. My feeling with Michelle was ‘Hey, if she feels comfortable, let her get on with it".
To begin with, Leadbetter fended off the adverse comments of others with jokes along the lines that his player had eaten some camel meat and was bent double with food-poisoning. But it was not too long before Michelle’s improved putting statistics were telling their own story.
In time, Leadbetter lit on one thing which had to happen if she were to render the method still more effective: she needed a putter which married better with the stance.
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