Bamberger Can't Stay Away From High Schoolers

We have a hard time getting all fired up about teenage golf "sensation" Michelle Wie. Nothing against her, of course; she seems like a nice enough girl. It's just that we find it incredibly strange that everyone's using a barely pubescent girl who hasn't won any tournaments to try to get us to watch a sport we don't watch that is being dominated by an astounding, attractive-in-her-own-right star like Annika Sorenstam. (Seriously, if people don't care about Annika Sorenstam, they'll never care about women's golf. Sorry. Jesus isn't coming, people.)

That said, we do love it when media people become part of the story, and that's what happened last weekend when Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger turned Wie in about a scoring infraction, costing her the first money of her pro career. Bamberger says he had a "sleepless night" deciding whether or not to turn her in, but ultimately he did. The big debate now is whether he's a huge self-promoter (we doubt it) or beacon of light for truth and justice (we doubt that too). He's actually started a little blog feud at TravelGolf.com, and golf blog fights, those are always great.

We're more interested in Bamberger, who, every time we look at him, is hanging out with high schoolers. His last project we saw was the book Wonderland, which details a year in the life of high school students in suburban-area Philadelphia. (It's a pretty good book, though we still love the idea of middle-aged Bamberger peeling "DORK" signs off his back in the lunch room.) Combine this with his career covering golf for SI, we kind of have to think this is pretty much his dream story.

SI Reporter Reports Rules Infraction [SI.com] Welcome To The Pros, Michelle [Travel Golf]