She has been a pro for a couple of weeks, but 16-year-old Michelle Wie is making headlines, even if they're not close to the ones she wanted.

Meanwhile, editors and reporters of the Golf Plus section of Sports Illustrated also are showing a keen ability to make — not write — headlines.

Here's the background: Wie took a penalty drop for an unplayable lie after hooking a 5-wood into a lantana bush on the seventh hole of her third round as a professional Saturday at Bighorn Golf Club in the Samsung World Championship in Palm Desert, Calif.

Michael Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, was standing nearby. He said he believed immediately that Wie had made her drop closer to the hole, and thus was in violation of Rule 20-7 of the Rules of Golf, worth a two-shot penalty.

But Bamberger didn't reveal his suspicions to an LPGA official until Sunday, after which rules official Robert O. Smith asked Wie and her caddie to return to the seventh hole. By then, she had finished the tournament.

After it was determined that Wie had moved her ball closer to the hole, she was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard the previous day.

The real troubling parts in this tempest are how Sports Illustrated seems to be milking the publicity angle, and the role of Bamberger, a sincere and dedicated reporter, who clearly bogeyed this hole.

No one is saying he didn't have the right to voice his concerns over what he believed to be a rule violation. Golf is the only sport with this kind of policing by individuals, and even though the penalties that come down do not always reflect the severity of the violations, the rules are clear and have stood the test of time.

Bamberger erred in not dealing with the situation Saturday. That would have prevented Wie's disqualification.

In a telephone conversation, Bamberger said his duty Saturday was to be a reporter first and to question Wie.

So what changed his duty Sunday, making him a whistle blower? He didn't get his jobs mixed up, he got his days mixed up.

Meanwhile, Bamberger's Sports Illustrated bosses are making the most of his news making.

His original story was a first-person account, but that was spiked in favor of an interview by a peer at Golf Plus for a story that featured phrases such as "preserving the integrity of the competition" and "one careless mistake will not diminish Wie's brilliant future" and even related an anecdote that BJ Wie, Michelle's father, shook Bamberger's hand after the disqualification and told him he had done a good job.

In other words, not exactly a dispassionate replay of the events. Then there is the seven-picture slide show on the magazine's Web site that shows Wie on that seventh hole and linking it into Bamberger's episode. What, no streaming video? This is the journalistic equivalent of piling on.

Bamberger said he considered every course of action, from doing nothing to talking to a rules official. Like Wie, he also erred in his course of action, choosing the wrong one on the wrong day.