Michelle Wie West has the secret to success as a working mom. She revealed it to a lucky group of reporters Tuesday at Riviera Country Club.
“The most important thing to note is almost everything I eat and drink will have caffeine in it,” Wie West declared.
That certainly helps as she keeps up with her daughter Makenna and son Jagger, ages 5 and 2, while doing everything from hosting the LPGA Tour’s Mizuho Americas Open to entering the golf course architecture world.
Now, Wie West is adding one more thing to her plate: playing in one final U.S. Women’s Open. It’s a bear of a task for anyone to come out of retirement and play the toughest major in golf, but Wie West is doing so not for individual goals, but with her family as her motivation.
For starters, her husband Jonnie is the son of late Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West, who was a member at Riviera and served as the executive director of the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational from 2009-13.
When Wie West won her lone major title at the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open, she received a 10-year exemption into the championship. A two-year maternity exemption meant her final opportunity to play in the major is this year, coinciding with the first time Riviera is hosting a women’s major. The stars had lined up.
Jagger was not yet born and Makenna was only 2 when Wie West played the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open, her final event before retiring. She said it was “a big factor” knowing that her daughter may remember her playing this week.
“My daughter is like the best sports psychologist I’ve ever had, honestly,” Wie West said Tuesday. “But I think this week, my husband and I were talking about this a lot, I’m going to try to live by the words I tell my daughter. I always tell her before a game or a tournament, whatever, I say, ‘I don’t care about the results. All I care about is a good attitude and that you try your hardest, right?’ That is my No. 1 goal this week, is to go out there and try hard and have a good attitude.”
Wie West then admitted that she didn’t always have a good attitude last month when she played the Mizuho Americas Open as a tune-up and shot 18 over par for two rounds before missing the cut.
Still, Wie West is not concerned about making the cut at Riviera. The former child prodigy, who was the youngest player to make the U.S. Women’s Open cut at 13, has children of her own.
As she and her husband raise Makenna, they’ve begun to reveal to her what her mom did for a living, her story and what she is doing now. That now includes nightly conversations that bring the two closer together.
“Being able to share this with her — even the last couple months, just practicing, we talk a lot before she goes to bed, and I tell her what I do while she’s at school,” Wie West said. “‘I had a tough day at practice. This is what I overcame. This is what I was working on. I was really excited that I got to do this.’
“We start to share our stories, and she’s extremely insightful. So it’s been really fun to kind of talk to her about it.”
