If you discount a low-key tournament in South Korea earlier in the year, where she managed to survive until the weekend, that now makes it six attempts and six missed cuts.

Perhaps Wie might consider taking the estimated $15m she is expected to make in endorsements this season . . . actual prize money has been a bit thin on the ground . . . and running before Nike and the rest of her backers have second thoughts.

Last week, courtesy of one of her sponsors, Omega, she was given a first shot at a European Tour event. The European Masters at picturesque Crans-sur-Sierre frequently makes for low scoring, but all Wie could do was put together rounds of 78 and 79 which left her 14 shots outside of the cut, and 22 shots behind the halfway leader, and eventual winner, Bradley Dredge of Wales.

"I'm still in shock, " Wie explained. Of the 152 competitors who completed 36 holes, she was dead last.

There was an eerie similarity about her performance at the 84 Lumber. Rounds of 77 and 81 meant she missed the cut by 13 shots, and the gap between her and the halfway leaders, Ryan Moore and Ben Curtis, was 23 shots. From what he had seen of Wie, the Australian Robert Allenby gave her no chance. The course at Mystic Rock was way too long, and the teenage prodigy simply didn't hit it far enough.

Allenby was right, and Wie finished 134th. Last, again.

If her forays into the men's game have been good for the sponsors, whether or not Wie's golf game has benefited is a moot point. At the Sony Open back in January, she went close to becoming the first woman to make the cut in a PGA Tour event for 61 years, but it has been a gradual slide since then.

She withdrew from the John Deere Classic due to heat exhaustion at which stage she was eight over par for 27 holes, she failed dismally in Switzerland, and now she has crashed and burned once more.

Annika Sorenstam might have succumbed to a sponsor's invite at the 2003 Colonial, where spectators poured in just as they do when Wie is in town, but that was that for Sorenstam. The experiment was over. And anyway, at that stage of her career, Sorenstam had won nearly 70 tournaments. Wie, meanwhile, hasn't won a tournament since the 2003 US Women's Public Links.

To her credit, she has performed well in her limited performances on the LPGA Tour with top-five finishes in three of the women's major championships, as well as a tie for second place at the prestigious Evian Masters in France.

Because of LPGA rules which state that no player can take up full membership of the tour until the age of 18, she is currently restricted to six sponsor's invites, but she can also play in both the US Women's Open and the British Women's Open.

So, she has a guarantee of eight highly-competitive tournaments. For a gifted young player who is still learning the game, and for a kid who still has homework to get through, surely eight events is more than enough.

At the same age, Tiger Woods was winning tournaments he had a chance of winning. He was preparing for the future, not chasing dollars.

Instead of being lauded for impressive finishes in women's majors, more is being made of Wie's run of failures, as well as her ignorance of the rules following a disqualification for an incorrect drop last year, and a two-shot penalty for moving a piece of moss in a bunker at this season's British Open.

All the talk of her competing against the men, and of playing at the Masters, has already compromised her rich promise. Her parents have agreed to allow her game to develop in the sort of commercial glare that has damaged other young athletes, and the novelty, the curiosity, have already begun to wear thin.

Not alone is she too young and inexperienced to be pitched in against some of the world's best male professionals, her record also suggests she is nowhere near good enough. Technique and timing are paramount in golf, but now, more than ever, strength counts, and Wie will never cut it on the men's tour.

Recently she said it was "totally possible" that one day she would play in the Ryder Cup. Sad and all as it is that someone would feed the madness by actually quoting her, she is now farther from that preposterous goal than when she first emerged.

mjones@tribune. ie