Michelle Wie West Wants to Win the U.S. Women’s Open One More Time

You could see the head tilts and darting glances when people peered around Pebble Beach’s Gallery Cafe, or as visitors sat on the patio that looks toward the cypress-guarded 18th green by Stillwater Cove. They surfaced at a luncheon with Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, and during a climb up a flight of stairs, and a stroll through a lobby.

That’s Michelle Wie West, that 6-foot-1 fixture of collective memory and modern golf history.

She did not win as much as she wanted to, and certainly not as much as many people thought she would or should have. But after close to a quarter of a century in the spotlight, she is still one of the savviest stars women’s golf has ever had, a player plenty of people outside of golf know as a star even if they do not know golf.

The competitive golf part of Wie’s life will most likely be done by dusk on Sunday, when the U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to finish at Pebble Beach. If things don’t go well, and they might not since Wie West’s husband will be her caddie for the first time and she has barely played lately, it could be over by dusk on Friday. After the Open, she has no plans to return to elite competition, though she dodges the word “retirement” in public (and confesses to sometimes using it in private).

She is 33.

That went fast, didn’t it?

In 2000, when she was 10 and Bill Clinton was president, she played the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. She won the event when she was 13, the same age she made an L.P.G.A. tournament cut and had a turn in third place on a major tournament’s weekend leaderboard. She played a PGA Tour event at 14, turned professional at 15, rattled off three top-five finishes in her first three majors as a pro, battled wrist trouble, won the Open at 24 and then spent years with more injuries, cuts and withdrawals than strong showings.

So it was not that fast, after all. Soon, though, it will apparently be finished. Barring a victory this weekend or a surprise in the years ahead, Wie West will finish with five L.P.G.A. Tour wins, including the 2014 Open at Pinehurst, tied for 69th on the career victory list. It adds up to a far better career than most players, though short of the mighty expectations that followed Wie West from the start and flowed from a blend of internet-age youth, talent, celebrity and marketability. (By way of comparison, Inbee Park, a 34-year-old player from South Korea, has won seven majors but has long drawn a fraction of the public attention that Wie West commanded.)

“What’s the right word for this?” Wie West said in an interview in a sun-splashed lounge, well out of earshot of any aides.

“I feel very — confident that I had the career that I wanted to,” she continued eventually. “Obviously, I wish I could have done more as well. I think anyone and everyone thinks that.”

But, she said, “the what-ifs and the regrets and the ‘I wish I could have done this better’ can drive you truly insane.”

Even last…