How young is too young?

On Friday, Wie, a teenager with a habit of pushing her lower lip out in a glossy little pout, almost did the unimaginable. For 14 holes, she threatened to become the first woman since Babe Didrikson Zaharias 60 years ago to make the cut in a men’s tournament.

Had she not made a late double bogey and bogey on two of her final four holes, she would have qualified for weekend play in the John Deere Classic. She didn’t — and it was a blessing.

Wie should be working through her summer reading list, not playing on the PGA Tour. Wie has plenty of time to play. What’s interesting about Wie is that she hasn’t actually won anything yet, or proven much — except that gender is becoming irrelevant in golf.

She is a 6-footer, slim as a blade, who can launch it 290 to 300 yards off the tee, and she seems all but impervious to pressure. ‘‘She might not be the best 15-year-old female in the world, she might be the best 15-year-old, period,’’ said USA network commentator Ian Baker-Finch.

But while Wie’s performance is worth celebrating, it’s also potentially disquieting. On the one hand, you have to love the fact that she obliterates the women’s tees, and raises the question of how long we’re going to separate tours for men and women. On the other hand, Wie is also evidence that age is becoming irrelevant in golf, too. And maybe that’s not such a good thing.

The important question is not whether Wie belongs in a men’s tournament. She’s answered that one. It’s whether kids belong in pro tournaments at all. Wie’s performance came at the very same time that Morgan Pressel, 17, is pressing the LPGA for an exemption to its age restriction of 18, so she can turn pro early. Paula Creamer, 18, won an LPGA event earlier this year. Pressel and Brittany Lang, 19, shared second place in the U.S. Women’s Open last month.

We’ve seen what happened to other sports that were invaded by teen angels, namely women’s tennis, gymnastics and the NBA. One of the nicer things about the sport up to this point is that both pro tours are made up primarily of college-educated players who are articulate, well-mannered and mature, who can sustain long-term careers and connect with their audience. The fallacy about phenoms is that they need to be pushed. There is a perfect blueprint available of how to raise a champion.

Just look at the career of Chris Evert, who started playing in pro tennis events in the summers when she was just a schoolgirl. Her parents turned down a fortune and insisted their daughter finish high school before she joined the tour full time. All that bought her was 15 years at the top, and a ton of Lipton Tea commercials.

There are already whispers that Wie needs to win something, soon, if she wants to keep up with the other teens. Still just an amateur, she has entered 22 LPGA events and finished among the top 15 in 10 of them — and that’s not good enough?

Wie’s appearance at the John Deere was just the first event of a long summer of golf for her. Next week, she plays against men again in the U.S. Amateur Public Links at Shaker Run Golf Club in Lebanon, Ohio, where she will try to qualify for the U.S. Open. After a week off, she goes to Europe for two LPGA events, the Evian Masters in France and the Women’s British Open. Then she will play the U.S. Women’s Amateur. Not a restful summer.

The point is that no 15-year-old, no matter how much of a sensation, should spend too much time on a pro Tour, whether male or female. Teenagers should be reading Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby and the rest of the books on their summer reading list. They should be doing things for the edification of the young, as opposed to playing in tournaments for the richification of grown men.

(LA Times-Washington Post)