Posted online: July 9, 2005 12:34 AM
Print publication date: July 9, 2005

Lebo saves Wie 12th hole

By Marc Nesseler, mnesseler@qconline.com

To Gene Lebo of Moline, Michelle Wie says thank-you for the help, and she's sorry.

Lebo, a 60-year-old golf fan at TPC at Deere Run on Friday for the second round of the John Deere Classic, only wishes he could have supplied similar help on Wie's 6th-hole drive as he did on her No. 12 bid that ended with a pitch for birdie.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that. I feel bad now," Wie said when told in the post-round press conference that her drive on the par-3 No. 12 hit a spectator, leaving a chip from the left rough.

"If he's reading the newspaper, I want to say `thank-you; sorry for the pain.' It turned out great."

It turns out Lebo is a 20-year subscriber to The Dispatch, having moved here two decades ago from Tennessee, so Michelle can consider the message passed along.

"It wasn't getting past me, not for Michelle," Lebo said of Wie's tee shot that struck him in the right leg at the knee after one bounce. "I played linebacker, so I know how to keep the ball on the field."

Lebo said Wie's ball would have ended up "at that cart back there," pointing 15 or so feet behind him, had he not stepped in front of the shot in the front row at the spectator rope.

Lebo, who recently retired from Robert W. Baird Co., wore a bright orange Hawaiian shirt to Friday's round, but it had nothing to do with his support of Wie, an Oahu native. "I got it from Kohl's for Father's Day," he said.

After Wie's spectacular pitch for birdie, Lebo said he was hoping that his assist "might have helped make the cut for her. It's great that we've got a Sunday crowd on a Friday. How much better can you get from one sponsor's exemption?"

Wie missed the cut, finishing at 1-under. The costly hole proved to be No. 6 on her back-9, when she took a double-bogey. She went from sand trap to sand trap, and then three-putted.

Asked if maybe Wie didn't need Lebo standing in sand on No. 6, the Moliner said he could have helped the teenager in another way on that hole.

"I'd have told her to keep the 3-wood in the bag (on the drive) and use a 5-iron onto the fairway and then 9-iron to the green," Lebo said. "I play that course twice a week; that's the way you have to go.

"If I could have let her know, she'd be playing on the weekend."