The trouble with always wondering: Are Wie there yet?

The Michelle Wie story is beginning to take a creepy kind of turn, one which even those people who warned against her accelerated push toward the big time and the big money at the beginning never foresaw.

That she would be unable to play with and get along with her classmates.

Oh, she'd been warned by all her media friends that fast-tracking her way to the men's tour was premature. She'd been chastised for being too big for her britches because she's hadn't developed her chops on the LPGA Tour before playing. She'd been admonished for not telling her father to take his foot off the gas. She'd even been kicked about a bit for being a little too ice-queenish for her image's own good.

And it all would have come across as petty and mean-spirited and hectoring if not for the fact that, well, that following her dream (in conjunction with her father's) at such an early age has gone so badly. She hasn't won. She hasn't made a dent on the men's side. Annika Sorenstam, who has no reason to feel threatened by her at this point of either woman's career, spoke of her with withering contempt. And she can't get anyone to believe that her wrist is bothering her.

In other words, to paraphrase John Vernon in Animal House, sore, dismissed and disbelieved is no way to go through your teenage years.

It isn't terribly useful to parse our blame percentages here. She gets some for being the main character, for flying too close to the sun too quickly. Her father gets some for being the kind of parent that would almost make Richard Williams cringe. We get our share for requiring that she be something she clearly isn't.

Michelle Wie has yet to win on the LPGA Tour. (Getty Images)

But the central point is, she played a high-stakes game with bad cards and a short stack. Her golf was worthy of all the accolades she could eat, but she was too controlled, too chilly, and too programmed to win over hearts and minds without the benefit of victory -- Tiger Woods without the skins.

And what she and her father either didn't know or ignored is the fact that without the latter, the former can be an anchor scarf. We tolerate much from winners; we accept more from strivers; we grade harshly when it doesn't work.

And yes, she is still 17, and her whole life is ahead of her, and all that. Hers is a future nearly any kid would take in a hamster's heartbeat. We wish her no ill, because we're not that invested one way or another in her well-being.

But 17 is also awfully early to be considered comeback player of the year, especially when it didn't have to be that way. She could have done all the things she wanted in a couple of years, when her game, and her ability to deal with setbacks, had developed more fully. She could have done all the things she wanted to do with a sturdier platform beneath her feet. But she went for it all on first down, the pre-LeBron road, the other Tiger, and so far ... so far, she looks pretty well lost.

This didn't have to be, of course, because there were any number of people using words like "patience" and "prudence" and "solid foundation" -- well-meaning people, helpful people, even some people who weren't thinking of ways to cash in on the Wie phenomenon.

Even some media types, although we'll dismiss that as a blind-pig-finding-an-acorn thing.

But she didn't want to hear it, because 17-year-olds don't tend to be great listeners. And her father didn't want to hear it, because he didn't want the dream deferred. And the investors and speculators didn't want to hear it because there is no dollar like the next one.

And now she is being glared at with that "How the hell could it go so wrong?" look that breaks far more callused celebrities. Now she is standing alone at a time when her contemporaries could be of the most help to her. And watching this unfold in some deep rough somewhere is ... well, creepy.

Truth is, school can't start soon enough for her. Stanford provides a sheltered but not isolating environment for her to build the foundation that she could have had if she and those around her hadn't been in such a grand hurry for her to break out. This is not the story of a failure, not yet, not by a long shot.

It is, however, the story of someone who chose the hard way when there were so many easier ways to go that would not have jeopardized her career and made her feel so unnecessarily vulnerable. This is a cautionary tale against stubbornness in face of the evidence, a tale of the value of finding strength in those who have walked the walk before you -- specifically of Annika Sorenstam as resource rather than as scold.

But that's the way it always seems to be. You can't tell the parents of teenagers anything these days.