Spare a thought this weekend for Michelle Wie and Freddy Adu. Rarely can two athletes of such immense promise have fallen so quickly on to the hard rocks of reality.
Both are kids still and, in their respective disciplines, golf and football, capable of wonderful individual moments. Both have been hyped hysterically from their early teens, the products of an age that cannot wait for the next sporting thrill. And now both are contemplating the awful prospect that pretty soon people might stop talking about them altogether.
Wie, just 17 and back after four months out with a wrist injury, walked out of the United States Women’s Open this week, after being six over after nine holes of her second round. On the first day she shot an 11-over par 82.
She has not broken par in 24 rounds. She could conceivably go through her career as the richest women’s player of all time and not win a single event. Notions that she might match it with the men have already been blown out of the water; she is doing well to be hanging on in the women’s tour.
It seems a long time since Arnold Palmer said of her: ”She’s probably going to influence the golfing scene as much as Tiger Woods, or more.” Tom Lehman thought her swing was: ”Perfect … just perfect.” Fred Couples observed: ”When you see her hit a golf ball … there’s nothing that prepares you for it. It’s just the scariest thing you’ve ever seen.” Time magazine last year put her among ”the 100 people who shape our world”.
Wie would just like to shape a nice drive every now and again. But you have to admire her upbeat attitude. She reckons it is only a matter of time before she regains her confidence and then ”it’s a done deal” that she will start winning. She has just missed the cut for the first time in 15 Majors, however. This is a proper crisis for her and it will be a significant test of her fortitude if she is to become an even vaguely competitive pro, let alone a superstar.
As for Freddy Adu, he ought to be in Venezuela this weekend with the United States team at the Copa America. Instead he is in Canada playing in the under-20 World Cup. He’s trying to put a brave face on it, but the mask is slipping.
The 18-year-old with the fixed smile looks as if the pressure is getting to him. He is captain, but, for the first time, declined to give an interview the other day, until pressed by team officials. And his sheepish contribution was ”Hi guys.” Few forces are as powerful in killing the careers of gifted young footballers as their universal acclamation by the commentariat as the ”next Pele”, the ”new Maradona” or the ”best winger since Stanley Matthews”.
Adu is cursed with being labelled by people who should know better as ”the new David Beckham”, which probably has more to do with style than substance. Either way, the prodigy is struggling just to be the ”old” Freddy Adu.
Before he had his first pair of long pants, and not long after he got his first pair of shoes, he was marked down as someone special. He came to America from Ghana at eight with his mother and the remarkable talent he had in his bare feet propelled him, inevitably, towards celebrity in a society that feeds on its stars like dogs on bones.
At 14, Adu became the youngest athlete in the history of American professional team sport when he made his debut for DC United. He has flickered across the football sky intermittently since, never quite living up to the unrealistic expectations of those who put the same ”Tiger Woods” thing on him as they did with Michelle Wie.
It was never enough that either of them would be allowed to develop while carrying the baggage of being messiahs and role models and all that idiocy.
Peiro Ausilio, who runs Internazionale’s academy, said at the time when the Italians were thinking of signing him: ”He’s a great, talented player with great physical tools and wonderful technical attitude.”
By the time he had turned up at Real Salt Lake (RSL) via Washington’s DC United, however, the emphasis had shifted without any ambiguity. ”In Freddy Adu, RSL have acquired one of the iconic figures in Major League Soccer [MLS],” the club’s general manager Steve Pastorino told reporters.
So Freddy is an icon. A rusty one, but a magnet for business as much as a creator of goals, a symbol, a shirt-seller. Maybe he is the new Beckham. Had Adu turned out to be as brilliant as hoped, a lot of MLS predictions of expansion would have been much easier to sustain. But he hasn’t.
He’s a sharp, intelligent, ball-carrier with an eye for goal, but, as he has come to acknowledge, playing against physically mature men can be hard on the quickest feet, the smartest moves. Just turned 18, he has already been written off by some as a failure, which is a bit tough. In interviews he is generally affable, but in a forced way. He looks to be hiding his doubts. You’d like him to make it, but Olympus all of a sudden looks a long way off. — Â