Caddies, managers and trainers have come and gone in Michelle Wie’s life but David Leadbetter has remained a constant. The coach has steered his charge through highs and lows to the point where she earlier this year joined his long list of major winners - a list taking in such great names as Nick Faldo, Ernie Els and Nick Price.
To recap, in June Wie finished two ahead of Stacy Lewis at Pinehurst to capture the US Open, a performance worthy of the hype that been heaped on her since she first hit the media spotlight as a teenage prodigy.
Where there are other teachers who might have found it difficult to school a player so closely bound to her parents, BJ and Bo, Leadbetter has never found it a problem.
He realised at the outset that the best way forward was for him to work with the family.
"I always give BJ and Bo credit," he says. "There’s no rule book on how to handle a child prodigy and, considering the amount of flak the family have had to take, they’ve done well. They were protective when they felt they needed to be and now they’ve given Michelle more freedom and she’s thriving on it. She’s more passionate about her golf than she’s ever been."
Leadbetter felt for the Wies in those years when players and public alike were so critical of the route the then 14-yearold Michelle was taking in peppering her schedule with men’s tournaments.
"It all started with the Sony Open," he recalls. "Michelle got a wild-card because the event was in her backyard in Hawaii and because she was out on her own in amateur golf on the island. Of course it made sense for her to accept.
"Lots of people said that she should have been doing as Tiger did in playing on the USGA’s junior circuit and winning in all the different age-groups. But what these people failed to take into account was the time and expense involved in flying over to the mainland. That’s something which certainly didn’t make sense."
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