The 29-year-old Hawaiian had surgery in October in an effort to fix a troublesome right hand that had bothered her since a car accident in 2017.
She said her hand had still been bothering her before the tournament, but she had not listened to her body, so eager was she to defend her title.
"I had a bad flare-up during my round," she said in a social media posting on Twitter.
"It just kept getting worse as I tried to play on. I made the decision on 15 to withdraw as at that stage I was unable to lift the club."
Wie, a former child prodigy whose professional career has been hampered by a series of injuries, said scans had cleared her of any serious new damage.
The withdrawal comes barely a month before the first women's major of 2019, the ANA Inspiration.
(Reporting by Andrew Both in Cary, North Carolina; Editing by Ian Ransom)
