Still, the Waiakea High School junior coolly sloshed her way to an even-par 72 and a 36-hole total of 138 to take a three-stroke lead over defending champion Stephanie Kono going into today's final round of the 54th Jennie K. Wilson Invitational.

"Pretty good round for the weather," said Wilson, who had opened with a 66 for a four-stroke lead over Kono and Kamehameha Schools junior Mari Chun.

Playing the back nine first, Wilson shook off bogeys at 11 and 15 — the latter reducing her lead over Kono to one shot — by rolling in a 20-foot birdie putt at the par-5 16th.

Kono closed to one stroke again by birdying 18 to make the turn in 34. But she gave it right back with her first bogey of the day when she failed to get up and down from the front of the green on the par-4 first hole.

Both birdied the eighth hole, Kono dropping an 8-foot putt after Wilson stiffed her approach to 3 feet.

Kono, however, three-putted from 25 feet at the closing hole, blowing her first putt 10 feet by to finish at 1-under-par 71. She found herself making up only one shot on Wilson after a long, wet day.

"It was tough. It was so wet," said Kono, who thought the conditions made scoring difficult. "It was really hard to make birdies. Making pars was difficult enough."

Still, Kono doesn't think Wilson's three-stroke lead isn't insurmountable. "It's difficult. But I think I can do it. If it doesn't rain," said the Punahou School eighth-grader, who at 14, can become the youngest back-to-back champion in the state's most prestigious women's event.

"She hits the ball long, farther than me," said Wilson, who finished second in the Jennie K. two years ago.

That time, Wilson was chasing the eventual winner, Kira-Ann Murashige, by five strokes. This time, she's ahead by three and liking it.

"I'm glad that I'm leading. I can play my own game," said Wilson, the Big Island Interscholastic Federation champion who finished third in the state championship earlier in the week.

Chun was alone in third at 147 after a 77 yesterday. "I was striking the ball good but the putts weren't dropping," she said.

Ayaka Kaneko shot the day's best round — a 2-under-70 — to join Kimberley Kim and Miki Ueoka in a three-way tie at 148.

What's remarkable is that the average age of the threesome is 13 years, 7 months.

Kaneko, 14, attends Sacred Hearts Academy, while Ueoka, 15, is a Kaua'i High sophomore. Kim is even younger; the Waiakea Intermediate School youngster is 12.

The dominance of young golfers in the Jennie K. hasn't gone unnoticed by two-time champion Bobbi Kokx, the last adult winner of the event in 2000.

"They make it definitely challenging," said the 40-year-old elementary school teacher from Maui and the only one who's not a teen-ager among the top 10 on the leaderboard.

"The scores are getting lower and lower, so it definitely makes you play better," Kokx said. "In that sense, they've made me a better player."