As Michelle Wie tees off in her 12th U.S. Women’s Open today it feels like we have watched her astonishing career from a distance. In stark contrast, Mariel Galdiano has flourished before our sun-splashed eyes.

Wie — now 25 — will defend the most prestigious championship in women’s golf this week in Lancaster, Pa.

"I started playing the women’s U.S. Open when I was really young," she recalled this week, "and people expected me to win then … but I think it was meant to happen at that time (last year)."

It seems as if she has been away much more than home since the 10-year-old caught the golf world’s imagination in 2000, becoming the youngest to qualify for a USGA event.

Galdiano, playing in her third Open at the tender age of 17, came into our consciousness when she took a lead into the final round of the 2010 Hawaii State Women’s Stroke Play Championship.

The child did not win that last day, but she also took second in State Match Play that year and has lost little else locally as a young woman.

About to start her senior year at Punahou, Galdiano could become the first to win four Hawaii state high school championships. She ran away with the last two Jennie K. titles, shattering the scoring record in Hawaii’s most prestigious women’s tournament last year.

She broke that personal record while running away with last year’s 2014 Arizona Silver Belle Championship, one of the most prestigious national events for girls.

Galdiano, already committed to UCLA for 2016, is now 39th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. She is hoping all that has happened over the last five years will help soothe her soul and allow her to play on the weekend for the first time at the U.S. Women’s Open.

"I am trying to train myself to become comfortable with pressure and high expectations," Galdiano says simply. "From myself, friends, family and the media."

Wie has played under unique pressure most of her career, and always embraced it, usually inviting it.

She was the youngest to qualify for an LPGA event, at 12 in Waikoloa, and won the U.S. Women’s Public Links the following year — a few months after playing in the final group on the final day of the year’s first LPGA major.

In 2004, she missed the Sony Open in Hawaii cut by a shot, getting an exemption into the PGA Tour’s first full-field event of the year and creating immense interest worldwide.

The following year she became the first female to qualify for the U.S. Public Links Championship, falling to the eventual champion in the quarterfinals.

And then "Little Wiesy" turned pro just before her 16th birthday. That was four LPGA titles and a Stanford degree ago, a time filled with fascination, criticism, awe, envy, injuries, success and much prosperity and joy.

Her 11th-place finish at this year’s Lotte Championship at Ko Olina, which she won in 2014, is her best by far in 2015. Her scoring average is 72-plus — three shots higher than last year — and illness and a hip injury have tormented her.

But she is back at the site of her greatest accomplishment, and sounds precisely as you would expect. Wie is positive and speaks of feeling "healthier and healthier" and how her Open win has provided "huge motivation."

She remembers the moment she actually believed Pinehurst was "do-able — not easy but do-able" — last year. She is still proud of accomplishing her goal of "not getting greedy" on her game’s greatest stage.

And while Wie still grins broadly when recalling her long birdie putt on the 17th hole on the final day, she calls the 5-footer for double bogey on the previous hole her most memorable moment.

"That, for me, was the moment that I felt like I was the most in control that I’ve ever been," Wie says.

She characterizes the past year as "a fun journey" and has words of wisdom for Galdiano, and pretty much everyone blessed to be in a U.S. Open.

"I always put too much pressure on myself coming into this tournament," Wie says. "Last year I just thought, no pressure."

Easy to say, difficult to do. Galdiano has never broken 80 at the Open, but she was 10 shots better in 2013 than in 2011, and she is now much wiser.

"I used to not be able to handle the pressure that the tournaments had and wasn’t able to play my best," she says. "But now, I have learned to deal with the pressure, control my emotions, and be more relaxed while I’m playing."

Trying to qualify for this year’s Lotte Championship is the only thing that comes close to playing in the Open, according to Galdiano. The "demand until the every end" and the need for near-perfection stayed with her.

She knows this week will be an even more severe test of "determination, perseverance and patience."

She hopes she is ready. She knows she is much more prepared than she was at her first Open, days after her 12th birthday.

"If I were that age again, I would tell myself don’t beat myself up too much," Galdiano says. "Have as much fun as possible by being relaxed, and never ever give up."