Michelle Wie, Silver Linings and Q-School

Michelle Wie would probably like to put the Women's U.S. Open in the rearview. She carded a nine on a par-4, fired an opening round 81, and ended up missing the cut by something like 60 strokes*. Making matters worse, she didn't finish her second round until Saturday morning, when she had to show up to play just one hole before getting a late start on her weekend.

But there is good news. Sorta: the Open result doesn't affect Wie's quest to finish inside the top 90 to earn her LPGA Tour card. Not much of a consolation prize, but beggars and all that. Waggle Room has the details of what Wie needs to do to avoid Q-school.

To get that Tour card, Wie will have to earn roughly $95,000 total, and she's used three of six sponsor exemptions so far: Earned $2,570 back in February in Hawaii; missed the cut at the Michelob Ultra; made $18,887 last week at the Wegmans.

So Wie needs approximately $75,000 or more out of her last three sponsor exemptions. Which she can get, for example, with one Top 10 and two Top 25s, or three Top 15s, or one Top 5 and two missed cuts. (Wie can always try to Monday qualify for additional tournaments, too ...)

Seems doable, but, then again, Wie hasn't played consistently in almost two years. Plus, she didn't sound all that psyched about the prospects of Q-school:

"I think the qualifying conflicts with school, so I probably won't go to that," Wie said earlier in the week, noting it was tough to take one week off at Stanford last fall to play in a tournament. "But hopefully, I'll make enough money this year to get exempt for next year. I'll see how it goes..."

Her dad was more realistic about the whole thing: "What other options do we have?" he said. Not sure if he consulted his daughter about Team Wie's plan, but Dottie Pepper will no doubt keep us all updated.

* slight exaggeration