Women's Golf: Creamer Pips Wie As Flavour of Month

Nothing is as fickle as the mantle of greatness, at least not when it lies in the gift of golf's futurologists. This month, like last month, the future of the women's game is teenage, American, hugely talented and eminently marketable. But unlike last month it is not Michelle Wie.

Then the 15-year-old Hawaiian schoolgirl was basking in the global attention generated by her prodigious talents and the remote possibility that she might qualify for this year's Open championship at St Andrews. Now Wie has been relegated to the status of newspaper discussion topic - should she be playing against men? - and Paula Creamer has stolen her title as the prodigy most likely to challenge Annika Sorenstam.

When the second women's major of the year tees off today at Bulle Rock in Maryland, Sorenstam will be the favourite but the list of her youthful challengers will be headed not by Wie but by the 18-year-old Californian Creamer, with whom the Hawaiian has an occasionally acrimonious rivalry.

Creamer has long been known to golf's cognoscenti, thanks to an amateur record that included 19 wins and a five-stroke victory at the tour's qualifying school last year, but mainstream America took notice last month when she became the youngest LPGA winner for 50 years, holing a 15-foot putt on the last to win the Sybase Classic.

Creamer, who insisted that her parents allow her to leave home aged 14 and enrol in the David Leadbetter Golf Academy in Florida, reacted with typical self-confidence. "My main goal this year is to make the Solheim Cup team," she said. "But I'm going to try and win a major as well."

The Sybase victory lifted her into the top five of the LPGA money list as well as earning her a host of accolades, from the trivial (ABC News's "person of the week") to the hip (an invitation to appear on the David Letterman Show) to the career-enhancing (a phone call from the US Solheim Cup captain Nancy Lopez).

The contrast with Wie's month could not have been more pointed. On the course the Hawaiian has performed below her own high standards, not least during her attempt to qualify for the men's US Open where she failed to advance beyond the first stage of local qualifying. Off the course she has been the target of the most concerted criticism of her career so far.

"She says she wants to play on the men's tour?" Lopez asked. "Why? It's a little insulting. I feel she should play out here and beat Annika first before she even tries to play the men."

The LPGA tour is an altogether more hospitable place than the men's game but the past few weeks have seen a succession of senior women professionals criticise both Wie's often-stated desire to play with the men and the generosity of tournament organisers who continually give special invites to their events.

It did not help that the LPGA tour changed the entry rules for this week's tournament - reportedly at the insistence of the sponsor McDonald's - to ensure that Wie, still an amateur, was able to play. "This is the kind of tournament where you should have to earn your way into. If we have to resort to this kind of thing for publicity maybe we should look at other ways we can do it," said the American pro Christie Kerr.

Wie was stung enough to write a letter to the Associated Press. "People ask me why I do what I do," she said. "My answer is very simple: I always wanted to push myself to the limit. I started walking when I was nine months old and I started reading when I was just over one. I have always wanted to do things fast."

It will take more than a well written letter to quieten Wie's army of doubters and dent the growing belief that Creamer may be the better player.

The two were rivals in the amateur game when, much to the chagrin of the Creamer family, Wie received most of the publicity and attention despite the fact that the older player had a far better record. Both were members of last year's US Curtis Cup team and now profess to be great friends, though it must be tempting for Creamer to believe she has finally achieved what she once publicly stated as her goal and "kicked her butt".

It is a tribute to the self-restraint of the LPGA Championship organisers that they did not pair the two young stars in today's first round. The temptation, though, will be impossible to resist in future .