Golf: Wie's Professional Move Nets Sponsors' Millions

After endless speculation about how much Michelle Wie would be worth to the commercial sponsors and sportswear companies circling the most vaunted golfing prodigy since Tiger Woods, the answer emerged yesterday: £5.52m, double the amount of money commanded by the world's leading female player Annika Sorenstam, who has won 62 LPGA tour events during her illustrious career.

Reports from the United States last night confirmed that the 15-year-old American will turn professional in time to play in next month's Samsung World Championship in Palm Springs, although she will make the transition earlier than expected so as not to distract from one of the biggest events on the women's calendar. It may happen next week, when it is expected that her new representatives - the William Morris Agency - will announce that she has signed with three commercial sponsors, including Nike, which will pay her £2.7m a year, and the electronics company Samsung. She can expect to make up to a further £1.65m for simply playing certain events, such as the Casio World Open in Japan in November.

The US-based Golf World magazine also reported that the teenager was invited to take part in the Skins Game, a nationally televised event in America featuring four of the world's top male players playing for up to £27,600 a hole, but turned it down because of her scheduled trip to Japan.

"She will be the most recognised female athlete on the planet for the next 12 to 18 months," the US-based sports agent Scott Seymour told the magazine. "Her marketability will never be higher than it is now. How much money she makes will be determined by how well she plays."

Wie, who will not graduate from high school until 2007, has long made it clear she does not see her future exclusively on the women's circuit but rather as someone who plays on the LPGA and the men's PGA tour. Her main ambition, she has said, is to play in the Masters; she came within three match-play victories of achieving that goal this summer when she reached the quarter-finals of the USGA Public Links Championship, the winner of which is automatically invited to Augusta.

Nevertheless her initial focus will be on women's golf, although she will eschew the traditional route of trying to earn her playing privileges at the pre-season qualifying school and will instead rely on sponsors' invitations to tournaments and hope to make enough money to win her tour card that way. Last year she would have earned £354,000 playing in LPGA events but her amateur status meant she was not allowed to accept the money.

As well as attracting the attentions of numerous commercial sponsors she was the subject of fierce bidding between rival sports agencies desperate to secure her signature, including the world's biggest, IMG, which represents Tiger Woods. In the end the William Morris Agency, famous for representing Hollywood actors rather than sportsmen and women, won the battle by agreeing to take a hugely reduced commission fee - an impressively hard-nosed piece of negotiation for a schoolgirl who has yet to win a women's professional golf tournament.