Excerpts from interviews about Honolulu's Michelle Wie from a panel of former professional golfers turned television analysts Dottie Pepper and Johnny Miller, and golf insider Brian Hewitt of The Golf Channel.

Dottie Pepper, a 17-time LPGA Tour champion who spent 17 years on tour and now works as a golf analyst on NBC Sports and The Golf Channel, on Wie's golfing ability:

"Ballstriking-wise, I think she's absolutely phenomenal. I've never seen a 15-year-old hit the ball like she does, male or female. Obviously, if you look back at the stats, the bit of a black eye is her putting. But that's just because she's 15 years old. She simply hasn't had the number of repetitions players that have gone through college or who are in their 20s or 30s have. I think she tends to become a little bit mechanical. But she's kind of wired that way. Her favorite class last year was physics. So she's wired in a mechanical, I-need-to-know-why way. Sometimes putting the ball, that can kind of be a stumbling block."

Pepper on Wie cherishing her youth:

"I think people need to remember, first and foremost, that she's a 15-year-old kid. She's an unbelievable athlete, but before that, she's a kid. ... Last week, when I spoke with her, she said, 'Yeah I haven't been home since the end of May. The first thing I want to do is go to the beach with my friends.' I think people need to step back and remember, she's this huge factor in women's golf, and huge factor in sports in general today, but she's still a 15-year-old kid and there's things 15-year-olds go through — part of it is missing their friends when they've been away for awhile."

Pepper on the importance of Wie having other interests besides just golf:

"I just think the broader spectrum you can make yourself in general, the better off you'll be, because this golfing doesn't last forever. There could be some freaky injury, or you wake up one morning and go, 'I just don't like doing this anymore.' Well-rounded people, like Jack Nickalus, he had so many other interests. He played tennis, he skiied, he hunted. So it wasn't all just golf, golf, golf.

"I think the more things she can be exposed to that aren't necessarily just golf, I think it will benefit her golf in the long run. I grew in upstate New York where the weather was such you couldn't play golf all the time. I skiied and I taught skiing until I turned professional. So I had a wide variety. My parents would say, 'That's enough golfing today, you're done.' So I had parents who kind of pulled me back, instead of pushed me forward. And that over the long run — being on tour for 17 years — was a wise thing."

Johnny Miller, a 25-time PGA Tour winner and the lead analyst for NBC Sports' golf telecasts, on Wie:

"I think she's handled everything just amazingly well. She's handled this stuff better than most 22-year-olds. The press, even the way she dresses and takes care of herself, her posture — everything about her is very, very far ahead of her age. I was so impressed with her swing. I think her swing is almost a copy of Tiger Woods from 1998 to 2000. I like Tiger's new swing now, but I still like her swing better than Tiger's, which is saying a whole lot."

Miller on Wie playing with the professionals:

"She's in a difficult situation. If she tries to play junior tournaments, or high school stuff, or collegiate stuff, she has such a bullseye on her. She has everything to lose and nothing to gain. If she doesn't win every one of those she plays in, people are going to say, 'She's not that good.' Even as a pro, if you're playing in a pro-am, or with people who are supposedly not as good as you, there's a lot of pressure to beat them, otherwise they'll tell everyone they whooped you. I think she feels much more comfortable with the pros because she has everything to win and nothing to lose. I know how she feels because when I was supposedly the best player in the world in the mid-'70s with Nicklaus, I had a bullseye on me all the time. When I did an outing with Greg Norman, when he was just 19 and 20 years old, he had me in his gunsights. I had nothing to win. He had everything to win and nothing to lose."

Miller on Wie's chance on winning a fully-stocked men's event with players such as Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh:

"There's a chance. It's probably going to have to be in the next 10 years. The whole secret in golf when you turn pro is whether you hit your peak at 19. ... A lot of guys, the best golf they ever played is when they were, like, a junior in college because the hole is like 3 feet wide. They don't realize it can lip out. When you become a pro, you realize not everything has to go your way.

"I think she has a lot of room for improvement around the greens and on the greens. If she can improve that, she has the distance. She has the great swing, she has the shots. She has the punch shots, the draw shots, the cut shots, she's got the height when she needs it, she can knock it down low. She's actually as good as a whole lot of guys on tour as far the shots she plays. In fact, she has more shots than most guys on the PGA Tour. And she's willing to use them. A lot of guys have the shots, but they never use them. ... Now it's whether or not she can really turn it up another notch or two — around the greens and on the greens — then she will clean up on the women's tour because of her distance and the shots she has. She has a lot more shots than anybody else on the women's tour at 15.

"It's basically from 50 yards in, if she gets as good as the better men's pros, yeah, she could win on the men's tour. It's going to be a long shot, but she could do it. That's saying a lot."

Brian Hewitt, the golf insider at The Golf Channel and former Chicago Sun-Times and Golfweek reporter, on Wie:

"I think she is a phenomenon. I don't throw that word around lightly. Your jaw drops because her mechanics are so good. She's got a long, tall, golf swing like Tom Weiskopf had. It's a classic golf swing.

"She seems to be a very bright girl. I think in terms of dealing with all the stuff that is going to come with the media, I think she'll get there in due time, and considering her age, I think she's doing just fine."

Hewitt on Wie turning professional:

"I have a lot of respect for her parents. When I talked to (Wie's father) BJ, he always said the final decision would be Michelle's. I believe that. I don't think he's going to force her to try to do anything. I found him to be a pretty, straight-forward guy. He's got a lot of responsibility of trying to steer that ship."

Hewitt on Wie's possible professional scenario: (Golfweek magazine predicted in its July 23 edition that Wie will turn professional in October and sign a multi-year endorsement contract with Nike worth $10 million to $12 million.)

"We're hearing is that she'll turn pro, but she will not petition for membership in the LPGA, nor will she try to go to Q school (qualifying school) for the PGA Tour. If she doesn't do either of those things, and if she's a professional, she has a lot of freedom and flexibility in her schedule.

"If she tries to join the LPGA, they have to grant her the petition. If they do grant the petition, she would probably have to go to Q school and she would be required to play 10 events a year. If she doesn't petition to get into the LPGA, she can still get six sponsor exemptions, and she can also play in the U.S. Women's Open if she qualifies, and the Men's British Open if she qualifies.

"That's a total of eight events without having to be a member on the tour. Those are events that she could earn money for playing in. She can also get up to seven sponsor exemptions playing on the PGA Tour. This is hypothetical now, if you count the eight on the LPGA and seven (possible) on PGA tour, that's 15 events without having to be a member of either tour. ...

"The other thing it would allow her to do is: she could continue to go to school. She could play the 15 events when she wasn't in school. It would also allow her to accept certain events in, let's say in Japan or Korea, with appearance fees which would be very lucrative. ...

"I personally would love her to go to school. I'd like to certainly see her finish high school, and I'd like to see her go to college. I think if she played 15 events a year, with certain select appearances ... she could do that for an indefinite period of time."

Hewitt on Wie playing more junior events and learning to win:

"I think she should be allowed to play the highest level of competition that will have her. She's very ambitious that way in a good sense. A lot of people criticize (the Wies) for not playing more junior events and not getting used to winning. That's the so-called Tiger Woods model. I think it was a great model for Tiger Woods. I don't think it applies to everybody."

Hewitt on Wie's dream to play in the Masters:

"If she had qualified for the Masters out of the U.S. Amateur Public Links, she would have been instantly the biggest story in golf from now until next April. There would have been this countdown, there would have been this incredibly huge buildup.

"We were talking about this — 'What are the five or 10 biggest stories in the history of golf?' Tiger winning in 1997 at the Masters was because it had such a sociological impact. It wasn't just a sport story, it was a sociological story. Similarly, if and when Michelle Wie plays in the Masters, it will be a huge story because it will transcend the game of golf and transcend the sports world. She'll be on magazine covers, not just sports magazines.

"The Masters is a bastion. I think there's good people there, but it would be such a watershed moment to have a woman play in the Masters. I'm not going to say (the Masters is) the last bastion for things that are bad, that's unfair for the people. But it is a bastion, and if you get a woman in that field, it would be huge."

Hewitt on putting limits on Wie:

"I wouldn't put any limits on her. We have this saying in golf writing, 'Never say never when it came to Tiger.' If you ever said never on something, he would read it or hear about it, and he'd surpass it. I think there's a little bit of that with her."

Hewitt's final thoughts on Wie:

"I think within the golf world, I think everybody should take a look at Michelle and consider her, like, a national treasure. She needs to be treated normally. It's going to be so hard at some point if she continues on in her development. You see Tiger now, and he's got bodyguards. It's really hard for reporters to get close to Tiger.

"I've always been sort of sad about that because he has to distance himself because the demands become so overwhelming when you reach that status. I want to see Michelle achieve all she can achieve in terms of golf. I wish everybody who is going to be around her, I wish I could conduct a class and just get everybody down, and say, 'Here's what we'll try and do here, and give her chance.'"