New York Times reporter Karen Crouse swears Michelle Wie has changed, says so over a Sunday brunch at the Masters.

She senses a kind of Eagles peaceful, easy feeling has taken sway of the 24-year-old Punahou School and Stanford degree-bearer. (When this golf gig is up, those pieces of paper will be worth more to Wie than the famed Nike contract.)

You scrunch up your nose at Crouse’s comments. You trust her reporter instincts, but you’re not so sure and say so.

"I don’t know what it is," Crouse says in that Southern Californian hippy-lilt of hers, a smile turning up the corners of her mouth. "But she’s different somehow. All grown up. I can’t quite put my finger on it."

A week later, you see what Crouse is talking about. It’s not something maybe anyone would notice, but after a decade of brushes with Team Wie, that sense of entitlement has been humbled. A bit.

She still talks too fast, as if spilling out the words quickly enough allows her to get the hell out of there. You’d think one of those six-figure representatives she’s paying for would step in and say something. But too often those reps side with the client as opposed to helping her. No matter.

This isn’t about what happens off the course. Way too much has been made of that since she burst on the scene like Halley’s Comet. Who’s to say what any of us would have done differently had we been faced with the same choices. Mistakes were made for the entire world to second-guess. The price of fame is a … well, you know what I mean.

Watching her win on the course Saturday reminded us of why so much white noise came our way in the first place. She’s got game. Always has, still does — if in a different shape and form. She still can’t putt well enough to win a U.S. Women’s Open, but she is the leading money-winner on the LPGA Tour, and that’s saying something.

Her caddie is a good one. Their relationship seems genuine, and when you’re surrounded by people saying you’re doing everything right, you need someone you can trust to say: "You’re wrong." That’s what a caddie’s for. Just ask Bubba Watson’s Ted Scott. He’ll confirm it.

What Wie did right this weekend was play aggressive, but smart — excess within control. You don’t need the big stick to win a golf tournament, you need that flat one. Ball-striking is like singing on pitch. Putting brings out the soul, the heart, the belief that you belong on stage.

It’s one thing to put yourself in a position to win, quite another to capitalize on it. Golf analyst Nick Faldo points this out every week. On Saturday in the final round of the LPGA Lotte Championship at home on Ko Olina Golf Club, Wie capitalized. Big-time.

That tap-in putt for bogey at 18 for her first win on American soil is at least five years late. In a similar duel with Angela Stanford in 2009 at Turtle Bay, it was Wie who was tracked down at the finish line by Stanford, not the other way around.

The Texan was gracious in victory. Said she was a late bloomer herself and that Wie had plenty of time to blossom. Well, Wie has. Finally. Earning her degree at Stanford was a necessary step in the process for Wie, much more important than her Nike driver or her Kia car or her Big Mac and fries. She might not have slept with that trophy on Saturday had she not walked at Stanford. Again, who’s to say for sure?

What we do know is that Wie has moved on from the girl who was too big for her age. She’s passed that like it was tied to a post. And what’s next is … well, anyone’s guess… again. The thing they don’t tell you about hard work is, it doesn’t necessarily mean success. Wie still has that word "potential" tattooed across her back.

The only thing that will satisfy the critics is a bag full of majors. And with this victory on Saturday, No. 3 on the LPGA Tour, comes expectations. For a couple of years, those guys weren’t riding around in the golf cart. Wie’s world ranking sank into triple digits. She was kind of forgotten about, another dream over the dam, as Joni Mitchell once sang.

But you get the feeling that Crouse is right. She has covered Olympic athletes her entire career. When you hang with that crowd, you know that something something when you see it. And Wie played with it down the stretch on Saturday. She knew she was going to win, a belief system she couldn’t swing at Arnie’s place on the North Shore all those rounds ago.

So, we’ll see. There’s a lot of golf to be played in Wie’s life if her wrist and back hold up from too much practice as a youth. The mind seems right. The drives and approaches are clicking. The putting? Well, there’s the rub of the green for you. That needs tweaking, but she’s close. Correcting that fraction of a difference could make her as whole on the golf course as she seems off it.

Reach Star-Advertiser sports editor Paul Arnett at 529-4786 or parnett@staradvertiser.com.