The man who never sat down on a golf course while his daughter was playing now was sitting down on almost every hole. BJ Wie walked up each fairway at LPGA Qualifying School in Daytona in the first week of December 2008, placed his backpack on the ground by the green and rested as he waited for his daughter to make her way toward the flag. He greeted media and fans with more than the usual politeness, even warmth. His wife, Bo, smiled often, another rarity. The couple even shared a hug after their daughter shot a blistering 65 on her second day of qualifying.

The earth had shifted since Michelle Wie went into free fall in mid-2006. The public relations firm hired back then to handle her impending superstardom no longer posted a rep to keep track of her every public move. No Nike or Sony employee walked the course to monitor the $10,000,000 investment they'd made three years before. Perhaps most telling, there wasn't a live television camera to be found.

NEW MATURITY

Swing-coach-to-the-stars David Leadbetter did accompany Michelle on her five-round odyssey, and he admitted the extent of her injuries, saying that he had spent the past year working around her left wrist instead of just resting it. "Her left side was so weak it was hard for her to hold on to the club," he said. "It never came down in the same plane at the same time." The result: a significant loss in power brought on by a seriously out-of-kilter swing.

"You're at the peak of Mt. Everest one day and then you're down in the dumps," Leadbetter said as he walked toward the 18th tee on the LPGA International Champions Course on a chilly Sunday afternoon. "She's doing it now because she wants to do it. Not because she's being told."

But there were signs of a new maturity in the Stanford sophomore. Wie, now 19, took fewer risks with her driver, rarely went for par 5 greens in two, and bounced back from missed chances better than the riverboat gambler who had formerly controlled her golf psyche. The result: scores of 69, 65, 72, 68, 74 to finish T-12 in a grueling event in which the top 20 finishers earned fully exempt status on the 2009 LPGA Tour.

But after nearly a decade in the spotlight, Michelle Wie still had a chance to conquer and captivate.

The year leading up to Wie's enrollment in Q-School had been nothing short of awful. After making the Forbes list of top 20 earners under 25 in December 2007, with an annual income of $19,000,000 and change, she learned she would not get a sponsor's exemption to her hometown Sony Open in January of 2008. At the Fields Open at Ko Olina in February, she finished 72nd, last among all players who had made the cut.

Wie received a sponsor's invitation to the Safeway International the following month, but pulled out with another aggravation of her left wrist injury. She missed the cut at the Michelob Ultra Open, and then failed to qualify for the 2008 U.S. Women's Open.

The avalanche that began in the late summer of 2006 had only gained speed.

Her fortune seemed to turn at the State Farm Classic in July, as the old Michelle Wie showed up and shot 17-under through three rounds, only one stroke off the lead. Then disaster: Wie somehow failed to sign her second-round scorecard and was disqualified.

After 53 sponsor's exemptions or invitations in 62 LPGA tournaments since 2001, Wie found herself with nowhere to play. Men's events had enough of her unsightly scores and quick exits. Women's events wouldn't keep inviting her while everyone else had to qualify. She averaged a 76.7 in 2008 and broke 70 exactly zero times.

So her decision to go to the 2008 LPGA Qualifying School was an easy one.

She had no other choice.

POWER PLAYER

But the Michelle Wie story is far from over. She still powers the ball close to 300 yards. She has a repertoire of iron shots that rivals any on the LPGA Tour. She may never putt well enough to reach her goal of beating Tiger Woods or playing in the Masters, but Michelle Wie still has the swing and the smarts to be a major force in golf.

And she has time.

Annika Sorenstam didn't win her first LPGA tournament until she was 24.

Michelle Wie doesn't turn 20 until October.