Kapalua's Mark Rolfing, an NBC golf analyst who has followed Michelle Wie's career, is at this week's Samsung World Championship. Rolfing, who will be the on-course commentator with Wie today, provided The Advertiser with this account of Wie's round yesterday:

GREAT SHOWING

"It was an incredible round when you think about it. She's played great the last two days. I was just looking at her stats. She's hit 15 greens both days. So she's hit 83.3 percent of the greens. ... Anytime you're over 80 percent that's really good."

ENCORE PERFORMANCE

"It's obviously tough to follow a great round with another 65. I think she'll break par (today) unless something strange happens, (such as) the wind comes up. I think she left (yesterday's) round with a lot of confidence. Her ball striking has been as good as I've seen it at anytime in her career. I don't see any reason why she won't play well. I certainly think she can win."

FORECAST OF TOP SCORE

"I personally think (tomorrow's winning score) won't get to 20-under. I would say you're more in the 15- to 18-under range. I think if Michelle shot anywhere between 68 to 70 (today) that would be a good performance. If she holes more putts, she could go low again."

WIE VERSUS THE BEST

"In (yesterday's) round, when I look at the four players that everyone was talking about — Michelle Wie, Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr — Michelle beat Annika by 6 shots, she beat Paula Creamer by 4 and Cristie Kerr by 6 in 18 holes. So that was an impressive performance."

AROUND THE GREEN

"She's having some trouble reading the putts. We saw her miss a couple of short putts (yesterday). She missed a couple of crucial putts (Thursday). I was watching her practice after the round on the putting green. Greg Johnston, her caddy ... they haven't read a lot of putts together. They placed a ball down the green somewhere near a hole, and Michelle would line it up, and Greg would line it up, and Michelle would line it up, again. They would talk to each other to see what they thought ... how they thought the putt would break. For Michelle ... that was almost more important than actually executing putts. They were just trying to see how much on track they were."

TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE

"Michelle felt it was a dangerous situation (on the 14th hole with bees hovering near her second shot). And that's why the official gave her relief. She was asked in the press conference, whether or not she would have played the shot if she didn't get relief. She said she thought she could hit it, but then said she wasn't sure that would have been a smart shot. I don't really think she had made up her mind if she didn't get the ruling what she was going to do. ... You have to look at the rules literally, and literally the rule book says she deserves relief in that situation."

PARK AND WIE PAIRING

"Michelle has the confidence of, 'Wow, I'm teeing off in the last group (today).' She's playing with Grace Park, who is a nice, quiet, low-key player. She's going to have no impact on Michelle's game and probably won't have any sort of a rooting side as opposed to Paula Creamer (who is a good rival to Wie, and paired with Sorenstam in the next-to-last group). I think that would have been just a little bit of a distraction."