For reasons that never made much sense to me, golf, which often gets lumped in with polo and yachting as a frivolous pursuit of the rich, took a major public relations hit during the nation’s financial meltdown a few months ago.

 

Remember the outcry over Northern Trust, which took bailout money, having the audacity to sponsor the Northern Trust Open in Los Angeles? And don’t forget the fallout when AIG was discovered to be entertaining clients at a golf resort.

 

Suddenly, from coast to coast, companies and corporations that had long used golf to lubricate the gears of commerce were distancing themselves from the game, for fear of being portrayed as fat, rich and wasteful.

 

At the U.S. Open at Bethpage, many corporations tried to get out of their contracts for hospitality tents.  Of those who stuck it out, many opted not to display their corporate logo.

 

And nothing sums of the state of things any better than the recent departure from the game of Buick, once the sponsor of four PGA Tour tournaments, not to mention Tiger Woods.

 

So it was a pleasure, and a surprise, to pick up yesterday’s New York Times and see a positive story about golf, accompanied by photo, occupying a large chunk of page 1-A.

 

The headline was "Thirsty Golf Courses as Model for Water Thrift," and it was a much-deserved nod to the expertise of the modern day golf course superintendent.

 

In a nutshell, the story said that in areas such as the arid Southwest and drought-ridden Southeast, nobody has figured out how to stretch a gallon of water more efficiently than your average golf course super.

 

"In Georgia, golf course managers have emerged as go-to gurus on water conservation for both industries and nonprofit groups," said the Times story, which carried an Atlanta dateline.

 

The story recounted the horrific drought in the Southeast of a couple of years ago, and described some of the creative measures golf courses adopted in their misery use of water. They mowed less frequently and more selectively, found grasses and plants that needed less water to survive and, of course, reduced irrigation, to name a few examples.

 

Kathy Nguyen, president of the Georgia Water Wise Council, told the newspaper that her group had relied heavily on golf course superintendents in drafting guidelines for homeowners and industries.

 

Finally, golf gets some positive pub.

 

 

As somebody who has hammered Michelle Wie with criticism over the past couple of years, let me be the first to say, "Welcome back, Wie."

 

Did you see that U.S. Solheim Cup captain Beth Daniel made Wie, who is still only 19, as one of her two captain’s picks for the upcoming match against Europe? (The other pick was eight-time Cup veteran Juli Inkster.)

 

And did you see and hear young Wie when they handed her the microphone at the press conference?

 

"I am so honored and so thrilled," she said. "I'm just so excited to be wearing this jacket and this hat and to be representing my country; it's such a thrill for me. I'm just so honored and so thankful that Beth picked me and I'll do my best not to let her down."

 

She was so...poised, so...grown-up, so...likeable.

 

Gone was the sullen attitude Wie had shown in recent years, replaced by a new reality-based view of herself and the world around her.  Can it be only a year or so ago that  Wie was careening from one bad decision to another?

 

Nothing she did seemed to be wise or right back then: playing injured, firing caddies or agents, making yet another ill-advised and failed attempt to play against the me in a PGA Tour event.  It was beginning to look like the erstwhile promising young phenom from Hawaii was going to implode or, more likely, simply fade into well-deserved obscurity.

 

But something happened once she got to Stanford.  Maybe it was because she was a little older, a little wiser – or maybe she discovered life not being under the thumb of her domineering parents.  Wie began to blossom, or blossom once again. You never see or hear about her parents these days.  She seems to have taken control of her own young life and, frankly, her life and career appear to be on an upward trajectory.

 

Now, having earned her way onto the LPGA tour via Q-school, Wie is a rookie in good standing.  She still hasn’t won a tournament since the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, when she was 13, but victory will come sooner rather than later.  So far this year, she has five top 10 finishes in 13 tournaments and ranks 17^th on the LPGA money list.

 

If she didn’t earn one of the 10 Solheim Cup spots on points, it was only because she ran out of time.  Wie was 13^th on the points list, an impressive feat considering she did that in only one year.  Everybody ahead of her earned their points over two years; if they had gone by only this year’s points, Wie would have ranked 6^th and made the team on her own for the Cup, set for Aug. 21-23 at Rich Harvest Farms outside Chicago.

 

The bottom line is that the Michelle Wie we all rooted for several years ago looks like she’s back.  Good.  Here’s hoping she does well in the Solheim Cup, gains a ton of confidence and truly sets her young career on the fast track once again.