Michelle Wie West confirms how close she came to playing in the Masters tournament at Augusta National

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Michelle Wie West will definitely be remembered as a golfer who changed the game during her remarkable career, with Wie West one of those who really brought mainstream attention to the sport, particularly in her first few years on the scene.

Michelle Wie West made her LPGA debut at the age of 12, while she made her first cut the following year – doing so at the first major of the season no less. She would end the week of the 2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship as the leading amateur.

Perhaps Wie West will be best known for her attempts to compete in men’s tournaments. The 35-year-old played in eight PGA Tour events during her career. While she was unable to make the cut in each of those events, it is inevitable that many would have been inspired by her taking on the challenge.

But there was one glass ceiling Wie West was not quite able to break. It turns out that one of the goals she did not manage to achieve was competing in The Masters – an event no woman has ever managed to secure an invite to.

Michelle Wie West explains how close she came to earning a spot at The Masters

However, Wie West came incredibly close to earning a spot in the field back in the early stages of her career. Speaking on On the Road with Iona, Wie West explained all that stood between her and teeing it up at Augusta National.

“I think it was around the time I started playing in men’s tournaments, and I was like, ‘I want to play in The Masters’. The craziest part about it is that I was so close to achieving that goal,” she said.

“So I played in the men’s Public Links and back in the day, two of the finalists got to play in The Masters, and I lost in the quarter-finals, so I was one more match away from playing in The Masters as a 15-year-old.

“I shot a couple under par and I lost to a gentleman named Clay Ogden and he shot six or seven under that day. It was one of those rounds where I gave it the best I could, but it does hurt. I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I was a 15-year-old that played at The Masters.”

When women were first invited to become members at Augusta National

It is hard to comprehend how big Wie West qualifying for The Masters would have been for the game. It is frightening to think that women were only invited to be members at Augusta National for the first time in 2012 – six years after Wie West would have potentially earned a spot.

It would have been fascinating to see what Augusta National would have done had Wie West won the US Amateur Public Links Championship. While the winner traditionally did earn a spot in the following year’s Masters, it was not guaranteed. So there may have been uproar had Wie West won and not been handed a spot for the following year.

The game definitely still a long way to go, but there is no question at all that Wie West more than played her part in changing the sport with what she showed was very much possible.