Hawaii’s LPGA Lotte Championship is back for a sequel. Golfers from more than 20 countries tee off at Ko Olina in Wednesday’s opening round, including nine of the world’s top 10. Ai Miyazato defends her title.

All four days will be broadcast in prime time back east. Our weird weather is predicted to return to perfection.

But really, what most in Hawaii want to know this week at Ko Olina is what is wrong with Michelle Wie?

How can a player so gifted finish her classes at Stanford one week and flunk golf the next?

A year ago Wie, 23, was 24th in the Rolex World Rankings. Now the Punahou graduate is 91st. She made just 13 cuts in 2012, with one lonely top 10.

Wie made 13 LPGA cuts before she was 15, and came within a shot of making another against the guys at the 2004 Sony Open in Hawaii. Two years later she was ranked third in the first Rolex Ranking and barged into a U.S. Open sectional qualifier, finishing five shots short of playing at Winged Foot.

Two years after that Forbes magazine ranked her fifth on its list of highest-paid female athletes, with $12 million in endorsements. That staggering number has hardly changed — she still represents Nike, Kia, Omega, McDonald’s and Sime Darby — but after winning twice and collecting 20 top-10s since officially joining the LPGA in 2009, last year was shockingly mediocre, a word rarely associated with Wie. She finished 64th on the money list and outside the top 125 in fairways hit and putting.

"The window hasn’t closed," broadcaster Judy Rankin said at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the LPGA’s first major and last tournament, where Wie was 40th. "What we have to find out now, and only time will tell, is if there are just too many scars."

Wie appears as unscarred and upbeat as ever. She calls herself a "serial Tweeter and Facebooker," blogs, draws and moved to Florida last year to be closer to her coach, David Leadbetter.

She walked in Stanford’s graduation ceremony in June, purchased a Kahala home and upped her support of the Hawaii State Junior Golf Association, becoming title sponsor of its state championship.

On the course, it is rare to feel her frustration. Off the course it does not exist, but Wie does not deny how difficult it has been.

"It’s tough every week when you just give it your all and things don’t work out," she said after her practice round Monday. "I try so hard, but that’s life. I’m still really lucky, still feel really grateful."

For all the analysis that has gone into her putting and swing, Wie’s biggest battle now is with herself.

We have seen her sink putts and hit the snot out of the ball at an early age. But golf is the quirkiest of games. It comes and goes and makes people crazy, which is part of its wacky charm. Bad putting worms its way into bad ball-striking. An unlucky bounce can cause chaos.

Confidence and comfort are everything, and Wie, who tees off at 7:50 this morning in the Pro-Am and 12:20 p.m. in Wednesday’s first round, has been searching for those zones for a year now.

Graduation — what Wie considers her greatest accomplishment — might be one of the causes. Suddenly, the well-rounded life she had worked so hard to cultivate since Punahou was gone.

"I went through a really big transition last year," she says now. "I didn’t realize how big of a transition it was for me to graduate from school and not to have school in general. It actually was a little difficult at first.

"I also moved to Florida full time and that was big for me. Moving anywhere for anyone, it takes a toll. It took a big toll on me. I’d spent my entire life growing up in Hawaii and then going to school and then not going and having to think about golf after golf … I had a lot of time on my hands. A lot of golf. It’s a big transition. Hopefully transition time is over."

She saw some light at the end of this strange tunnel in the eyes of Lydia Ko, her precocious playing partner at Kraft. The 15-year-old’s "in awe" attitude reminded Wie of a happier time and place in her golf career, and perspective came with it. Ko, who will celebrate her birthday here next week, made Wie happier to be on the golf course.

"I think back and a lot of times I took a lot of things for granted — being at tournaments and competing on tour," Wie recalled. "So I just really feel grateful that I’m out here."

Home, on a course she knows well, in a place where most of her friends have absolutely nothing to do with golf.

"I think we put unrealistic expectations on her," says Ko Olina Director of Golf Greg Nichols. "I don’t think she has done that to herself. Having said that, she has high goals and she’s not dialing them in. She was here late last week and working as hard as I’ve ever seen her work. She is focused. She is 23. Don’t forget that."