The U.S. Women's Open last week had all the makings of a great story line for local golf fans.

Kapalua's Mark Rolfing was making his debut as NBC's announcer and Hawai'i's own Michelle Wie, Kimberly Kim and Cyd Okino were all on stage in the biggest tournament in women's golf.

Unfortunately, the three talented teens didn't survive the 36-hole cut, leaving the stage solely to Rolfing, as far as the local angle went.

Fortunately, Rolfing delivered an impressive performance, one good enough to merit an encore in the U.S. Senior Open at the Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado Springs, Colo., later this month.

Rolfing said all the right things. He did his homework. He provided insight. He called, with nine holes to go in Sunday's final round, what would turn out to be the key par putt by 19-year-old Inbee Park, who became the youngest U.S. Women's Open champion, succeeding Se Ri Pak, another South Korean golfer.

"It was a tremendous experience. It was exhilarating," Rolfing said about his network television debut, which needed a mulligan or two to get it started.

Rolfing already had in a couple of rounds as the lead announcer Thursday and Friday on ESPN. But Saturday was his world debut on NBC. It was scheduled for 3 p.m., Eastern time, but the tennis matches at Wimbledon ran late so he was told the golf telecast would begin at 4:15.

"At 3:35 I get this call that we're going on ESPN in 30 seconds," Rolfing said. "Twenty minutes after that, I get a call that we're going on NBC and the rest of the world. At that point we were on both NBC and ESPN. We ran long, of course, and so we were on NBC and then ESPN2. That Saturday was one of the strangest scenes in televised golf, they told me afterwards. That was my network debut."

Rolfing got his chance because this is an Olympic year for NBC and a lot of the other announcers had major Olympic assignments. "I'm only a golf guy. There were a number of options and I did some golf for the Golf Channel," Rolfing said. "They decided I should be the guy and the USGA said, let's do it. So we did it."

And Rolfing did Hawai'i proud.

"I was definitely more prepared for this than any other televised event I've ever done. First of all, it's women and a full field. It took a lot of work," said Rolfing, who has done mostly men's events.

"I had two guys up there with me, feeding me information all the time," said Rolfing, who quickly used one factoid to point out that Annika Sorenstam's show-stopping eagle-3 at the 72nd hole was her 1,025th shot in 15 U.S. Women Open appearances. (If it is, what a way to go out.)

"And having Dottie Pepper next to me, I've got to tell you, she is unbelievable. If I didn't know who a player was, she would just pick up on it. They all made me look, probably, better than I should have looked. But I still needed to be ready. I knew this was going to be a big chance for me. Fortunately, and hopefully, I was able to take advantage of it."

Rolfing had people coming up to him and asking if he was going to do more in that role.

"The answer is maybe," he said. "But I have to tell you, for me, there's still no substitute for being out there on the course. Would I trade being out there with Tiger and Rocco at Torrey Pines or being in the 18th tower, watching on the monitors?"

It was a rhetorical question from Rolfing, who was out there with Woods and Mediate in their epic U.S. Open duel.

And you can't take the golf analyst out of the guy.

"If you've watched my style as a host, it's still a little bit of an analyst," Rolfing said. "I'm never going to get that out of me. I'm always going to be an analyst. I'm still an analyst at heart. It can't help but come out. I read some putts, which a host would never do. But nobody seemed to mind."

He's also one of the biggest boosters of local golf. And proud of it, too.

"What's really cool for me, going to these places like Minnesota, all people are talking about is all the great Hawai'i junior golfers. It's like Hawai'i has become known for being the hotbed of junior golf.

"They're all saying, 'OK, we love Cyd. Who's next? How many more do we have coming?'

"That's really neat for me. Mary Bea (Porter-King) was there and I'm sure she hears it, too. I'm so proud of what we have done (in Hawai'i). I just hope we can do more."

Okino, 14, shot the same score (156) as Wie and Kim, and Rolfing thought her first Women's Open provided invaluable experience. "She is going to be a great, great player," he said.

Rolfing was critical of some of Wie's bad decision-making, especially at the ninth hole in the opening round when she took a quintuple-bogey 9 that blew her chances of playing the weekend.

"She says she's starting over. When you start over, you take small, baby steps. You don't take big chances like that on the ninth hole on Thursday," Rolfing said. "You can't afford to take a big number. At that point, you have to say, how do I make a 5?"

Rolfing said he saw a different Wie than he did a year ago in the 2007 U.S. Women's Open at Pine Needles, N.C.

"I saw a more mature person, a person who recognizes that mistakes were made," he said. "I saw a person and a player that clearly wants to get better. She seemed very humble to me. I think that's a very good sign."

Bill Kwon can be reached at billkwonrhs@aol.com