Once Michelle Wie amazed us with her driving and daring.

Now, the surprise is in doing nothing.

After her latest withdrawal and a recitation of how the ailing wrist isn't getting better, you would have thought someone from Team Wie would have stood up and said enough for now and called it at least a summer, if not a fall, too.

After seeing her pained expressions leaving the U.S. Women's Open last week, you would have hoped someone would have announced what needs to be said and called a halt to the ongoing charade until her wrist and psyche are healed. Whenever that might be.

You'd like it to be Wie herself largely because of the tremendous relief it would probably bring her just to definitively deal with it instead of letting the burden linger. But somebody in that considerable entourage — parent, spokesperson, whatever — needs to do it.

The head-shaking wonder is that it hasn't happened yet. The suspicion is that the dogged intransigence on the issue isn't hers directly but coming from elsewhere in Team Wie. That somebody — or a couple somebodies — around her have more stubbornness than sense in continuing to make demands that her ailing body and mind haven't been able to deliver upon.

The behind-doors decision-making continues to baffle and alarm. There were openings to address the wrist issue for months and, for the longest time, nobody would. Instead, Team Wie clenched its teeth as if in saying nothing nobody would notice.

Then, there were opportunities to come clean about the withdrawal from the Ginn Tribute and apologize to host Annika Sorenstam and the sponsors. But, again, nobody did.

Now, when it is obvious that Wie is doing neither herself nor her sponsors any good by continuing to play — and withdraw — from tournaments her heart doesn't seem to be in there is still no action. Only silence.

And that's too bad because everything Wie has painstakingly built is rapidly eroding before the eyes of the golf world. The good will, the good name and the marketing.

Where once the operative image of Wie was an effervescent teen ready to take on all challenges imaginable, we are left with glimpses of a troubled youngster who looks like she'd rather be any place other than where she has been, slogging through the rough on a golf course. She mouths platitudes that body language suggests she doesn't believe any more than we do. She parrots a party line she doesn't appear to want any part of.

The best thing for her is to call it a year, rest the wrist and let the excitement of starting college renew a once untethered spirit that has sunk to her shoe tops. The lingering question is: When is someone in Team Wie going to step forward and finally do it?

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.