Amid the extraordinary golfing feats that I've been lucky enough to witness, a special place has to be reserved for the 14-year-old girl who took on the men from the same tees and matched or bettered 62 of them, including seven major champions, over 36 holes.
That was Michelle Wie, back in 2004. Just as we'd got used to Tiger Woods lapping the field, along came a player who, for a short time appeared if anything even more supernatural.
To be there at the Sony Open in Hawaii as she shot rounds of 72 and 68 to miss the halfway cut by a single stroke was to witness not only a game, but the sporting landscape taken to worlds it never imagined. If she could cope with all the hoopla that accompanied her appearance and hold her own at 14, what on earth was she going to achieve when fully grown?
Michelle Wie finished with her arthritic, troublesome wrists wrapped in ice once again
The R&A duly looked into the future and rewrote its rule book for the Open, to allow for what appeared the realistic possibility she could qualify and stand alongside the men in the greatest championship of all.
Given that backdrop, it was hardly surprising that a shroud of melancholy descended on the sport last week at the sight of Wie at the women's major in Minneapolis, the PGA Championship, distressed to the point of contemplating retirement at the age of just 29.
The girl who achieved so much, so young, before being tormented by her putting, was making her latest comeback following a catalogue of injuries, only to finish with her arthritic, troublesome wrists wrapped in ice once more.
It says much about the bearing of the Stanford graduate that she did not withdraw following a first-round 84. She battled on the next day but the discomfort she was feeling was obvious, as she carded an 82.
Wie, then 14, took on the men from the same tees in 2004 and matched or bettered 62 of them
'I don't know how much more I can take,' she whispered afterwards.
It seems plain that she should not play again unless a long-term solution can be found
