It feels like the "Michelle-Wie-raising-her-hands-to-the-sky-in-victory" thing was supposed to have happened already.

We were promised that it would.

When golf phenom Wie landed on the scene nine years ago, every tournament she played in was a Wie-watching event.

An impressive amateur at age 10, she was -- at the time -- the youngest player to qualify for a US Women's Amateur Public Links event. In 2003, at age 13, she made the cuts in an LPGA Tour event and in the US Women's Open.

Probably the toughest thing she could have done in her career was to make the final group in that first LPGA event. A 13-year-old playing for a championship that she then waited another seven seasons to get is a long, long time coming.

Understand this, I think it's fantastic that the women's golf game has had a figure like Wie to give girls the reminder that they have the same chances as boys to be great at a young age. After all, young boys were given that hope in the first year of Tiger Woods' career.

But here's the thing: Woods was 20 years old when he joined the PGA. Wie was 15.

She was playing in PGA events as an amateur at 14, though playing and succeeding are very different.

So when Wie joined the LPGA in 2005, along with it came the expectation that she would win right away simply because in her first LPGA event, she made the final group. Her early success made every event she entered the one she was expected win.

And don't think the LPGA didn't grasp at every straw it could to turn Wie into Woods and tackle marketing the game around the Hawaiian star.

But remember, she was 15.

As great as a golfer as she was, she was still too young to drive a car, too young to vote and too young to drink. If you wonder what happens when sports stars are born too early, look at tennis phenom Jennifer Capriati, who, in addition to reaching the finals at Wimbledon and the US Open at 14, was also arrested at 18 as her career started to fizzle with personal problems.

Putting the weight of the LPGA's future on the shoulders of a teenager, especially a teenager who still hadn't won a professional event yet, is risky business.

But all of that changed on Sunday, when Wie finished two strokes ahead of Paula Creamer in the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico.

With Wie once again in the final group, the sagging tour that has run through its share of problems this season, also breathed a sigh of relief.

"Literally, when Michelle Wie is atop the leaderboard it's like night and day and that's star power," LPGA spokesman David Higdon told the Associated Press. "That's all it is. This is somebody people want to follow. You see it in her presence, the way she walks around. The way people talk to her."

Wie has finally found her comfortable footing -- and not just on the putting green -- in her fifth season on the tour.

The win gives her more credibility and maybe will relieve a little of the spotlight to let her just play some golf.

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach her at hillary.smith@nwi.com.