Wii, No Wie

Nintendo introduced this device called Wii, which has two wands or some such, and has drawn curiousity from many in the gaming community.

But that's not who I want to talk about. I want to talk about Michelle Wie, the Korean-American golfing sensation.

Wie's played in a bunch of men's tournament. Until recently, she hasn't even made the cut, which would be quite the feat, but she recently made cut in the Asian Tour SK Telecom Open. To be fair, this isn't the strongest men's tournament, but to make the cut in any tournament speaks highly of her skills.

Wie's not the best woman's golfer. In fact, she may be winless in women's tournaments though she has come close. Annika Sorenstam is perhaps the best woman's player. She tried playing a men's tournament once and barely missed the cut, and decided not to try again. She played amazingly well on the woman's tour after that, however.

Now, critics may say Wie's desire to play against the men is silly. Sure, she's tall and can hit the ball a ton, but men still hit harder and further. And, they say, it's hurting her game not competing against women. After all, against men, she's not expected to win, or even be close to contention. She won't know the experience of closing out a tough tournament since she's always been so far off the pace among men that it's never been an issue.

But, let's recall how old Michelle Wie is.

16 years old.

Let's think about that. If she didn't win a woman's tournament for four more years, would we care? Sure, it may be long overdue by then, but really, she's only 16.

This is golf, too. Not tennis. Becker won at 17. So did Mats Wilander. So did Michael Chang. Women like Steffi Graf and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and Jennifer Capriati succeeded at the age of 15. But there were many years ahead of them.

As long as Michelle Wie continues to progress, I don't mind these excursions into the men's game. I know people think it's insulting to the women's game that she does this, but she's also drawing attention that the women's game doesn't usually get, and so the tour indirectly benefits.

And, when it comes to Asian American role models, who else do we have? Ah, I suppose you could say Tiger Woods, and so that's fine. He's half-Thai. Still, a typical African American is more likely to relate to Tiger than the typical Asian-American (although I'm told Thais have embraced Woods).

Another Michelle, Michelle Kwan, tried to skate in the Olympics, but pain prevented her from competing.

Any guys? I'm not sure what ethnicity Apollo Ohno is. In mainstream sports, you have to look to other countries like China. Nearly every Asian in baseball or basketball are from people that are from other countries. There have been a few Asian Americans in the NFL. The only one that comes to mind is Dat Nguyen, who plays for the Cowboys.

It's too bad Timmy Chang of Hawaii couldn't make the leap. He was in a system that gave him gaudy numbers as a quarterback, but no interest from the NFL.

I suppose much of the lack of Asian American talent in sports has much to do with parents preferring their kids to be engineers or doctors or something else besides sports, which is all well and good. It certainly makes some sense.

Still, ever since Michael Chang stopped playing tennis, I've wanted to see the next great Asian American talent. And that person may be Michelle Wie.