Wherever Michelle Wie goes at the PGA's John Deere Classic this week in Silvis, Ill., where she teed off this morning, she carries more than the now-familiar Nike swoosh, Sony logo and Omega wristwatch along with her.

For all of Wie's sponsorship millions, sport's most lucrative 16-year-old human billboard is providing her biggest endorsement this week totally free of charge.

With every story written about her and every radio and television piece done on her in weeks like this when she attempts to make the cut in a men's professional event, Wie reminds the world not only of what she is chasing, but of the considerable shadow of Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias she is doing it in.

While it remains to be seen if Wie can make history by becoming the first female to make a PGA cut in 61 years, she has already succeeded in returning the legendary Zaharias, the only woman to do it, to a much-deserved place in the spotlight.

Not since Zaharias made the cut in the 1945 Tucson Open, forerunner of the Chrysler Classic of Tucson, has a woman made a cut in a PGA event. So daunting has been the task that even with the passage of time, few have tried.

Now, a half-century after Zaharias' death someone who has only read of her exploits has succeeded in returning the name and image to the sporting public's consciousness. Unlike some of the milestones Wie is in pursuit of these days, this has taken on a face and a personality for generations born after the premier female athlete of the 20th century wound down her trailblazing career.

Until Wie's swing coach, David Leadbetter, gave his prize pupil a copy of Zaharias' biography last year, this remarkable figure was but a vague name in passing to Wie as well.

Unknown to Wie until then, and unfortunately unfamiliar to many now, is that golf accounted for only a portion of Zaharias' lengthy resume that extended to track and field, baseball, softball, tennis, swimming and billiards as well.

Indeed, Zaharias was a three-time track and field medalist in the 1932 Olympics and barnstormed with baseball Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander. When asked if there was anything she didn't play — and master — Zaharias liked to quip: "Yeah, dolls."

If Wie is battling odds and convention in trying to carve a niche in the PGA, we can only begin to imagine what it must have been like for Zaharias. She began her life before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women suffrage and helped found the LPGA decades before the advent of Title IX.

Whether you cheer Wie's untethered ambition or decry her gender-jumping pursuit of history in weeks like this, her role, however collateral, in reintroducing the wonder of Zaharias' accomplishments is not to be overlooked.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.