The LPGA Tour’s Samsung World Championship is not an event the average golf fan gets terribly worked up about. Yes, the field is limited to the top 20 women golfers in the world, but do you know who won last year? Okay, maybe that’s too easy. But answer this: Who did Annika Sorenstam beat and by how many?

This year’s tournament, teeing off this morning at Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, Calif., has an added attraction, however, one that will likely give it more column inches over the weekend than the PGA Tour’s Michelin Championship in Las Vegas.

The extra draw, of course, is the extraordinarily talented Michelle Wie, who actually played in the same tournament last year and who recorded her 24th appearance on the LPGA Tour at this year’s Weetabix Women’s British Open, where she finished in a tie for third. The difference this time is that she is playing for cash – the $212,500 winner’s check in particular.

As most of the world knows, the Honolulu school kid turned pro last Wednesday at 15 years and 358 days, after signing contracts worth a reported total of $10 million – one with Nike, whose clubs she will use and whose clothes she will wear, the other with Sony, whose gadgets she will rely on to make a hectic travel schedule more tolerable. In doing so, she instantly became the world’s best-paid woman golfer – considerably better paid, in fact, than Sorenstam, who earns “only” $7 million to $8million a year from endorsements and prize money.

But while her off-course earnings may already exceed the Swede’s, Wie starts her professional career 66 tournament victories behind Sorenstam, the women’s game’s undisputed no. 1 since the turn of the century.

To have any hope of toppling Sorenstam and justifying those fat contracts, Wie will have to start winning tournaments, something she hasn’t done since the 2003 US Women’s Public Links Championship. Since then, she has amassed 16 consecutive cuts on the LPGA Tour, narrowly missed the cut at the Sony Open (twice) and John Deere Classic on the PGA Tour, and reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Men’s Public Links – performances which, though impressive, might be of little use when she finds herself level with Sorenstam with nine holes to go on a Sunday afternoon and with a quarter of a million bucks on the line.

In recent months, several players, including Tiger Woods and fellow amateur Morgan Pressel, have questioned her wisdom playing events in which she was unlikely to contend, suggesting she would lose the winning habit she enjoyed during her days on the Hawaiian junior circuit. Others, including former

coach Gary Gilchrist, have always believed that Wie is better served going up against golfers who play on the tour to which she ultimately aspires. And there is little doubt that is what she will continue to do.

Wie has stated she will accept as many sponsors’ invitations as her school schedule allows (she will graduate from Punahou High School in two years and hopes to attend Stanford) to play on the men’s tours in both America and Asia, where her Korean roots guarantee massive appeal. She’ll also continue to play in the six to eight LPGA events she’ll have access to as a nonmember. The experience she gains from playing with the men, plus continued good showings against the women, (of which there have already been several) will surely put her in a very solid position when the time comes for her to take up full membership of the LPGA Tour in two year’s time (assuming she doesn’t request and receive a waiver to the Tour’s minimum age rule before she turns 18).

By then, the hype will likely have died down and Wie will be two years stronger and more mature. She will be more used to the traveling and more familiar with a sufficient number of players to feel at ease. Indeed, she could already have a couple of wins under her belt. Once she does join the Tour, only injury or a Jennifer Capriati-style meltdown should prevent her from battling Sorenstam for top honors.

The biggest factor in ensuring that success will be her length. Hitting the ball enormous distances is having an increasingly profound effect on the men’s game, of course, and while that trend may not be so apparent in the women’s game, a player with Wie’s power should find the 6,500-yard courses of the LPGA Tour extremely accommodating.

Heather Bowie, the 10th-longest player on Tour this year with an average of 259.7 yards per drive, will probably find herself 30-40 yards behind Wie on holes requiring a driver. Even top-ranked Brittany Lincicome will need to find another 20 yards if she is to keep up. The effect will be to wear down her opponents, who will be hitting a 7-iron while Wie flicks a pitching wedge onto the green, and who will need the mental fortitude of Tiger Woods, or Annika Sorenstam, to avoid developing a severe inferiority complex.

Watch Wie hit balls on the range at a PGA Tour event and you’ll see her ballstriking is comparable with the best male players in the world, save only for Woods, Els, Goosen, and a handful of others. It’s the result of what her current coach, David Leadbetter, has described as the best golf swing he’s ever seen, a swing that is sure to earn Wie untold riches over the course of her career, starting this weekend.