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Michelle Wie

Golf Channel personality Gary Williams referred to Michelle Wie this week as the former "it girl" on the LPGA Tour. And she was, even if she probably never should have been.

Now, Wie is only 22, and says she has a lot to prove.

She's playing this week's inaugural LPGA Lotte Championship in Oahu, Hawaii, which starts Wednesday and finishes Saturday. Wie is now a full-time LPGA player. Hard to believe, but she never has been so before.

That's because she chose to attend Stanford University even as she played LPGA events and other tournaments around the world. But she could never devote all her attention to golf. She took her final exam last month, however, and will graduate on June 17 with a major in communications.

While studying at Stanford, Wie won twice, including the 2010 CN Canadian Women's Open in Winnipeg. She tied for second at the Canadian Open last year, finished 28th on the LPGA's money list with $627,936 (U.S.), and is currently ranked 24th in the world.

None of this can hide the fact Wie hasn't come close to playing the golf everybody thought she would after she became the youngest player to make the cut in an LPGA event at 13 (at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, a major). She won the U.S. Women's Public Links Championship that year, a significant accomplishment for anybody, let alone a 13-year-old.

Wie wasn't shy about expressing her belief in herself and her goals. She wanted to play in PGA Tour events, and sponsors were only too happy to provide her exemptions. Every time she played, it was as if she were in a parade down Main Street, where people could gawk at her. She wanted to play the Masters one day, and still expresses that hope. But, no longer an "it girl," she expresses other goals.

"I feel like it's been pretty mediocre so far," Wie said recently of what she's done in golf since turning professional in October of 2005, a week before her 16th birthday. "I want to be the best player that I can be and the best in general, and, obviously, it's going to be … a fun ride from here on out."

Wie has played in four tournaments this year, and has won only $12,536 while missing two cuts. Her stroke average is 75.42 – a golfer with that number is going to miss most cuts.

Post-graduation, though, Wie is entering a new phase of her career. In interviews, she appears both thoughtful and more subdued, while at the same time expressing enthusiasm for the game. That's how she came across when she appeared last month on Golf Channel's Feherty.

Meanwhile, her long-time swing coach, David Leadbetter, had this to say to Golf Digest recently: "I can't be 100-per-cent positive, but I believe the burning drive is in there somewhere. She just has to pluck it out."

Wie will be trying to pluck it out on an LPGA Tour replete with other "it girls" and, of course, Yani Tseng, the No. 1-ranked player who, at 23, has already won five majors (and three tournaments this year). In Hawaii, Wie will play the first two rounds with teenagers Lexi Thompson and Jessica Korda, the new "it girls" given each has already won on the LPGA Tour.

Wie will play twice in Canada this year: the inaugural Manulife Financial LPGA Classic, June 21 to 24 in Waterloo, Ont., and the CN Canadian Women's Open, Aug. 23 to 26 in Coquitlam, B.C.

Maybe she'll have won by the time she returns to Canada. Or maybe she'll still be missing cuts. But one thing is certain: She'll finally be a full-time LPGA player.

That has to help her chances of being the player she was supposed to be, and still could be.

RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein

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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein

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