Mike Celizic

Let’s stop debating whether Michelle Wie has the talent to take on the men. After Monday’s 36 holes of qualifying at Canoe Brook golf course in Summit, N.J., that question is as moot as, “Is New York a big city?”

The 16-year-old girl from Hawaii dragged more than 3,000 fans, 350 reporters, her own enormous expectations and a Brobdingnagian chunk of history waiting to be written around 27 holes. And, with just nine more to play, she was one stroke away from becoming the first woman ever to qualify to play in the U.S. Open, which is merely one of the four biggest golf tournaments in the world.

More than 100 of the 152 men who were also trying to play their way onto Winged Foot 10 days hence weren’t as close to success as she was; a good number owned PGA Tour cards.

She didn’t make it, but that doesn’t diminish a level of talent never seen in a girl of 16 and has only been spotted in boys of that age at about the same rate that ivory billed woodpeckers have been sighted in the wilds of Arkansas. And she showed more than enough to make it inevitable that someday she — or another girl inspired by her — will qualify for a major men’s tournament.

The girl’s got game.

She played Canoe Brook, a Northeastern woodland course carpeted with grass that she’s not used to playing, the way you’re supposed to play an Open course. She didn’t try to do anything fancy, hitting fairways and greens, playing smart when she hit it in the hay, and hoping a couple of putts would fall so she could make as much noise as the gallery that swarmed around her like ants around a sugar spill.

And, yet, for all her talent, there remains a question to be answered about this extraordinary young woman. That is, can she make shots when she needs them? And, most important, can she make the putts that separate the field from the trophy?

If she could have gotten anything to drop Monday, she’d be looking forward to Winged Foot. But she two-putted green after green after green, missing long ones, medium ones, short ones, and, at one point, your basic gimme.

On her final nine holes, when she needed to make something happen, all she could manage was to make the wheels fall off her bandwagon. Needing one birdie, she made three bogeys.

She’s done this before, playing against men as well as women. And as much as you can rationalize it, saying she just needs to play more tournaments to get more experience, you can also wonder out loud whether her father and agents have already pushed her farther than they should have.

Remember, other than the Women’s Amateur Public Links title at the age of 13 — no mean accomplishment — Wie has yet to actually win a tournament that matters. She’s made the cut in a men’s tournament in Korea, and she’s twice finished one stroke out of a playoff in women’s majors. But she’s never actually won, and too often mistakes late have been the reason.

Before Wie, no golfer’s teenaged years had been as closely watched as those of Tiger Woods. And what we kept noting about his rise to the pinnacle of the sport was the way his father, the late Earl Woods, brought him along slowly and gave him opportunities to experience winning at every level before moving to the next.

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