Michelle Wie, having apparently not learned her lesson, having apparently not been sufficiently humbled and humiliated by her past efforts, has decided to once again tee it up against the men, in next week's Legends Reno-Tahoe Open.

True, the Reno-Tahoe Open is one of the more forgettable events on the PGA Tour calendar, a weak-field event whose fate it is to go on at the same time as the higher-profile World Golf Championship-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio. That is where the stars of the game will be - minus Tiger, of course - next week, not with Wie in Reno-Tahoe.

"It's not every day that a woman is given the opportunity to play on the greatest tour in the world," Wie said in a statement. "This is another step in the process of making me a better player."

Phooey. No, it's not.

What this is is a blatant marketing ploy by the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open to steal just a little of the limelight from the WGC-Bridgestone.

"Michelle is getting her game together, she's getting back in the swing of things, and we have no problem extending her this opportunity," tournament director Michael Stearns said in a statement.

Let's be honest. Do you think the tournament director's real interest is in young Miss Wie's well-being and her budding comeback, or in selling tickets and getting his tournament on SportsCenter, Golf Channel and the 11 o'clock news?

For Wie, this is nothing more than a way to say, "Look at me! Look at me! Again! Please!" and maybe justify some of the $30 million she has knocked down to date in endorsements.

The mind boggles at how she could have arrived at this decision.

Hadn't everyone, including Wie, been forced to conclude that her thumbing her nose at the LPGA Tour in favor of the PGA Tour turned out to be a pipe dream? Hadn't everyone, including Wie, come to conclude that she had suffered enough in her seven failed attempts to make the cut in a PGA Tour event?

Sorry, but it's hard to get that image of her being carted off the course at the 2006 John Deere Classic on a stretcher, suffering from heat exhaustion, out of my head. It wasn't pretty; it was quite sad, actually.

Ironically, this latest ill-considered decision comes at a time when Wie truly seemed to be getting back on track. True, she was DQ'd from last week's State Farm Classic on the LPGA Tour for failing to sign her scorecard, but so what? That's the bad news. The good news is that she was 1 shot off the lead when it happened.

Funny, but last year it didn't seem as if Wie could sink any lower. A wunderkind at 13, she seemed on the brink of being burned out and washed up at 17. She had nagging injuries to both wrists. She had lost her game, and ticked off Annika Sorenstam and much of the LPGA Tour. The girl made more bad moves than me on a dance floor.

But this year, at 18 and a freshman at Stanford, Wie has admitted her mistakes, taken responsibility for her actions and decisions, vowed to wise up, and set about trying to play her way onto the LPGA Tour for next year. Her once-glorious game even seemed to be returning. A lot of us were becoming Michelle Wie fans all over again.

So why does she have to go do something else that is so dumb, dumb, dumb?