KEY POINTS:
At this time of year, those who run professional tours watch on with an interested but essentially detached view of who comes through the qualifying schools to become fully fledged playing members for the following season.
But those who operate the LPGA Tour have a bit more riding on the outcome of their Q school finishing tomorrow in Daytona, Florida. The reason is one player - Michelle Wie.
She's 19 now, a multi-millionaire who has won just one significant golf tournament in her life and that was five years ago as an amateur. But her good looks, her long legs, her short skirts, her athletic swing, her pushy parents and her misplaced desire to play in men's tournaments have made her one of the most talked-about golfers of the decade.
Problem is, she's been a golfing disaster for two years. This year she played just one of the four women's majors, the US Women's Open, and missed the cut by six shots.
But here's the point. When she plays and is in contention, the LPGA gets better TV ratings and more public interest than at any other time.
Next year the LPGA Tour is down three tournaments on 2008 and total prize money will be nearly US$5m less than this year. One of the all-time greats, Annika Sorenstam, officially retired last weekend and women's golf needs a new star. Sure, there's Lorena Ochoa and Paula Creamer and Morgan Pressell and Natalie Gulbis but between them they've attracted probably 20 per cent of the attention in the non-golfing press that Wie has. Only two years ago, for goodness sake, Time labelled her one of "100 people who shape the world."
So this is why the LPGA Tour badly needs Wie to get her card this weekend. It's a sport, and a Tour, being dominated more and more by Asian players, especially South Korean.
Their considerable playing success, but lack of spoken English, led to one of the sporting year's more extraordinary edicts - that all LPGA players must be able to speak English in order to mix with sponsors and the US media.
After the predictable outcry, the instruction was withdrawn by the Tour's commissioner but the impression of a tour not hugely attractive to the American TV market had only been reinforced.
Even at this week's Tour Q school, there are 20 South Koreans in the field of 140. There are also players from 16 other countries as well as the US.
Like the men's tour, it's an international circuit but, in the hugely competitive sporting landscape, and with corporate sponsorship becoming more and more difficult to secure, the LPGA Tour badly needs a circuit-breaker.
It's worth reminding ourselves that, despite some dreadful publicity in the last two years (usually brought on by poor advice about where she should be competing), Wie can play.
Only two years ago, she had three top-five finishes in the women's majors, and would have made a playoff in the Kraft Nabisco had Karrie Webb not holed a wedge shot to make eagle on the last hole.
But there's always been something not quite right about the way Wie has done business.
Taking US$700,000 appearance money from a men's event in Korea which only offered a US$600,000 purse only confirms the impression that making money has been more important than playing. But at least she made the cut that time.
The key to Wie's success or otherwise will be her health. If she's fit, physically and mentally, she'll cruise through Q school and be successful on the tour. Her coach David Leadbetter is confident and reckons she is fit, pain free, happy and "hitting it long".
We had better hope that he is right about that.
