Michelle Wie annually looks forward to the LPGA Tour’s stop in Hawaii as a chance to get her fill of local food and catch up with friends.

The business side of her trip home begins today at Ko Olina Golf Club, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the fun stops at the tee box.

After struggling for much of 2016, the Punahou graduate enters the Lotte Championship with a run of 16 straight rounds of even par or better and two top-10 finishes last month. Along with ramping up her offseason practice regimen, Wie cited a shift in mind-set in her strong start to the 2017 season.

“This year I’m trying to have a better mind-set of just having fun out there,” Wie said during the pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday. “I think a lot of times when you’re struggling with your game, you kind of forget that it is a game and you forget to play it as a game. This year I’m really just trying to have fun out there.”

Wie, the 2014 Lotte champion, will start her week on Ko Olina’s 10th tee at 7:44 a.m. along with Brooke Henderson and In Gee Chun, last year’s runner up and the world’s fourth-ranked player.

The top three players in the world rankings — Lydia Ko, So Yeon Ryu and Ariya Jutanugarn — will play together in the 12:39 p.m tee time.

Minjee Lee begins defense of the title at 1:01 p.m. in a group that includes Moriya Jutanugarn and Paula Creamer.

Lee fired a career-low 64 in the final round to overcome a five-stroke deficit to win last year’s tournament at 16 under.

The now 20-year-old Australian played her last six holes at 5 under, starting with a pivotal eagle on the par-5 13th, to edge Chun and Katie Burnett and returned to Hawaii coming off a third-place finish in the ANA Inspiration, the season’s first major.

“The first nine I wasn’t really thinking about too much. I was just playing my game,” Lee recalled of that Saturday afternoon. “I was just trying to make as many birdies as I could (and) ended up at 8 under, so it was nice.”

Lee, Wie and 2012 champion Ai Miyazato will attempt to become the tournament’s first two-time winner in its sixth year of play, with some of the tour’s most prominent players targeting a breakthrough at Ko Olina.

Ko has spent the past 77 weeks atop the rankings and will look to improve on a tie for 23rd at Ko Olina last year. Former world No. 1 Inbee Park finished third in 2014 and was denied a Lotte win in 2015 by Sei Young Kim’s eagle from the fairway in a playoff.

Ryu has two top-five Lotte finishes in five appearances and arrived with the No. 2 ranking and the momentum of her win at the ANA Inspiration.

“This golf course is really a matter of wind,” Ryu said Monday. “It really depends on where its coming from, how strong it is. … (Also) these greens are very grainy, so … when you’re reading the line you have to look carefully where the grain coming (from).”

Wie missed 12 cuts in 2016, including a tough two rounds at Ko Olina, but returned to tournament contention with a tie for fourth at the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore in early March. A solo sixth at the ANA Inspiration vaulted her 30 spots to No. 75 in the Rolex World Golf Rankings.

“I usually take a good chunk of time off and I didn’t take any time off this year,” Wie said. “I just felt like I had good momentum coming in at the end of last year and just wanted to keep riding it and keep improving.”

Brittany Yada, a Waiakea graduate, will join Wie in making up the local contingent in the 144-player field and will make her second start in an LPGA event and first at Ko Olina when she tees off at 12:06 p.m.

The tournament’s future in Hawaii is secure through 2020 with the LPGA’s agreement on a three-year extension with Lotte.

“It’s one of the favorite spots for the players and I think we’ll have a riot if we tell them we’re no longer coming to Hawaii,” said Sean Pyun, vice president and managing director of LPGA Asia.

“The Hawaii Tourism Authority really helped us out quite a bit. … They were very locked into wanting to keep the LPGA and Lotte for three additional years.”

Pyun said details of the deal are still being finalized, but “we anticipate coming to Ko Olina for the next few years.”