There was the beach and the local food last week, and Saturday night there’s a Ping-Pong tournament for charity.

In the middle of it, Michelle Wie will find time to play some golf.

And if being confident and relaxed simultaneously is a positive, she has a chance to play very well.

It’s time to go to work now, with a 12:30 p.m. first-round tee time Wednesday at Ko Olina.

Wie arrives with a rare combination of momentum and freshness at the LPGA Lotte Championship, where she barely made the cut last year.

She had the weekend off here in 2012. That’s when she was paired with the teenager many compared to Wie for her precocious striking ability, Lexi Thompson.

They met again, tied going into the final round of the Kraft Nabisco two Sundays ago. Wie has had a week off after finishing second to the now-19-year-old by three strokes.

Of course it was disappointing, and Wie’s detractors have just altered their narrative from "she can’t win" to "she can’t win majors."

But with a week to decompress at home, the 24-year-old, two-time LPGA winner said she has discarded the negative and retained the positive.

She managed to do exactly that here last year after barely squeezing through the door on the cut line and then shooting under 70 on both Saturday and Sunday.

THE LPGA took last week off because of the Masters, and Wie got home to Hawaii as quickly as possible. That doesn’t mean she rushed out to the course right away, though.

"I got in Monday morning," she said. "I actually didn’t really touch my clubs until Saturday, but I was out here at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday if that counts, but yeah, I just played it once."

There was also Tuesday’s pro-am, in which she played well. Her group went 14 under, second only to Natalie Gulbis’.

If there’s any hangover from not being the chosen one for the traditional winner’s dip in Poppie’s Pond at Kraft, it was erased by beach time and plate lunches and being home.

While you have to like the chances for players like Paula Creamer and 2012 champ Ai Miyazato in a stiff breeze, neither of them — or anyone else in this week’s field — was runner-up in a major two weeks ago. 

Thompson isn’t here, nor is last year’s Lotte champion, Suzann Pettersen.

"I think half and half," Wie said, when asked if the break was good or bad for her. "I think it would have been nice to play a tournament coming off just being so close, I would have liked to have played last week, but at the same time I was pretty tired. It’s been three weeks in a row and it’s been kind of nice to come back home and do nothing, kind of beach it up all week. It’s kind of weird weather, though, unfortunately."

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Read his blog at staradvertiser.com/quickreads.