B.J. Wie, the father of heralded teenage golfer Michelle Wie, is a smart, personable man. But is he smart enough to recognize a fine opportunity to salvage his daughter's image, if not her career?

Father and daughter have, the past four years, become a sad caricature. A sports psychologist who wishes to study what happens when an ultra-ambitious parent hatches a gifted young athlete need look no farther than B.J. and Michelle Wie.

Michelle, as anyone able to distinguish tee time from tea time is aware, was anointed as the Next Great Thing in women's golf while still attending middle school. ESPN, Nike and Sony were quick to hop aboard this perceived gravy train.

Five years have passed. Wie is no longer a child. She is a young woman, soon to turn 19, and we still are waiting. Which by itself is not surprising. Most female athletes peak in their mid-to-late 20s.

But Wie is different. Isn't that what we were told (and told and told and told)? Wie is special. Wie is going to do what no female golfer - not Kathy Whitworth, not Nancy Lopez, not Annika Sorenstam - has done. Or has dreamed of doing.

The names Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy probably mean nothing to Wie. That is more than somewhat ironic. Her early press conferences brought the deft ventriloquist and his dapper dummy quickly to mind. There was Wie, expressing a degree of disdain for the LPGA Tour and the quality of competition therein and noisily setting her sights on that most hallowed of men's events, the Masters.

And nearby, always nearby, hovering like a second shadow, was B.J., nodding knowingly and approvingly while his daughter explained how she intended to conquer her sport's most inaccessible pinnacles.

Wie hasn't reached the summit. Truth be told, she hasn't progressed far beyond base camp. Her short game is a liability, and her resolve more closely resembles that of a house cat than a Tiger.

Don't think the LPGA hasn't noticed. Paula Creamer and Morgan Pressel, both of whom are Wie's contemporaries, are playing well and cashing first-place paychecks. Wie, meanwhile, is struggling to make the cut. The fact that she continues to gobble up sponsor's exemptions, ink and air time suggests, fairly or not, an aura of celebrity entitlement - an aura that her entourage has done little, if anything, to dispel.

If the reception she receives from some of her LPGA peers is a bit frosty, well, that is why.

Wie, the girl who was going to win everything, suddenly looks very much like every other youngster who has been pushed too far, too fast, by an overeager parent. She is struggling simply to keep her head above water. Her 2007 season was a trainwreck. Her 2008 campaign has been erratic with a capital 'E'.

She missed the cut at Kingsmill but played efficiently while qualifying for last week's U.S. Open. Her stay at the Open, however, was brief. She shot 81 on Thursday - including a gruesome 9 on the par-4 ninth hole - and was long gone when, on Sunday, another of her contemporaries, 19-year-old Inbee Park, became the youngest champion in Open history.

Whether this becomes her enduring legacy is up to her father. B.J. Wie can halt his daughter's slide toward irrelevance whenever he wishes.

He can do so by permitting her to start over and start slowly. By saying "thanks, but no thanks," to sponsor's exemptions and gratuitous PGA appearances. By pointing his daughter toward LPGA qualifying school or the Futures Tour and letting her learn her way - and more to the point, letting her earn her way - onto the big tour.

It's a nice thought. But don't expect it to happen. The spotlight is addictive. Once you've experienced its intoxicating glow - as an athlete or an athlete's parent - it's hard to live without it.