Mark Rolfing walked toward the driving range at Waialae Country Club and was struck by the ring of a single driver smashing into a golf ball.
It wasn’t that Michelle Wie, 14 years old at the time, was alone on the range as she warmed up alongside PGA Tour pros prior to the second round in the Sony Open in Hawaii back in 2004.
But “everybody had stopped,” Rolfing, the longtime NBC Golf Channel analyst, recalled of that morning.
“The range had stopped in their tracks as she was hitting these drivers that sounded like nothing we had ever heard. It was just fascinating.”
Already one of the game’s compelling figures as a teen, Wie would emerge as the most captivating storyline of that weekend at Waialae — when she fell one shot shy of making the cut — and would draw an intense spotlight at just about every stop in a playing career highlighted by five LPGA Tour victories, most notably the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open.
Now 32, married and a mother to a soon-to-be 2-year-old daughter, Michelle Wie West announced on Thursday that she is “stepping back” from playing on the LPGA Tour full-time in an Instagram post.
The Punahou alumna told GolfWeek that after next week’s U.S. Women Open at Pine Needles in North Carolina the only event she is committed to is next year’s Open at Pebble Beach.
“I’m so grateful for the past 14 years I spent on tour, traveling the world and competing against the best in the game,” Wie West wrote in her post. “Excited to spend more time now on projects that I always wanted to do but never had time for and to continually work to help golf become a more diverse and inclusive space.”
Wie West said she is the newest member of the Nike Think Tank “to get more involved with the design process and work on meaningful projects with them.”
Wie West did not use the word retirement in the GolfWeek story and told reporter Beth Ann Nichols, “I’m definitely not ruling anything out.”
Rolfing has worked with Wie West on Golf Channel telecasts and sees a future for her in television along with her other ventures.
“I feel really happy for her,” Rolfing said Thursday. “I think frankly she must feel a sense of freedom today that she hasn’t felt in many, many years.”
Rolfing said he first interviewed Wie West when she was “maybe 9 or 10,” and through the years had covered “a lot of highs and a lot of lows and expectations that were almost suffocating, and I feel like she must just have a sense of relief and a real feeling of freedom.”
Wie West burst into the Hawaii golf scene in 2001 when, at 11, she became the youngest winner of the Hawaii State Women’s Golf Association’s Stroke Play Championship and the Jennie K. Wilson Invitational.
Among her early experiences playing in men’s events would come that summer when she became the first female to qualify for match play in the Manoa Cup. The following year she won the Hawaii Women’s State Open by 13 shots and made Manoa Cup history again by advancing in the bracket.
Her ascent on the national level accelerated when she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links championship at 13. She played in her first LPGA Tour event in 2002 at the LPGA Takefuji Classic at the Waikoloa Beach Resort and turned professional at 16 in 2005. She picked up her first win at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in 2009, her rookie season on Tour. The next year she won the CN Canadian Women’s Open.
She drew attention, and scrutiny, in competing in men’s events and struggled with injuries for much of her LPGA career. She attended Stanford University while playing on tour and earned a degree in communications in 2012.
Her 2014 season would be highlighted by a victory in the LPGA Lotte Championship at Ko Olina Golf Club followed by her U.S. Women’s Open victory later that summer. Her fifth title came in the 2018 HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, where she closed a final-round 65 by rolling in a lengthy putt from off the green.
She remained connected with Hawaii golf as sponsor of the Hawaii State Junior Golf Association’s Michelle Wie Tournament of Champions.
Wie West’s playing schedule had lightened since a wrist injury limited her to four events in 2019. She and husband Jonnie West welcomed their daughter, Makenna, in 2020 and she played in six events, making two cuts, in 2021. Wie West made her last appearance in the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January and has $6.8 million in career earnings.
“She’s the U.S. Open Champion and you can never take that away from her,” Rolfing said. “So I hope she takes a little time now and really has time to step back and appreciate what she accomplished.”
