The LPGA was in Hawaii long before Michelle Wie was tweeting Harry Potter workout plans.

Actually, the LPGA landed here long before Michelle Wie. Now it is returning, after a two-year absence and with three card-carrying members from Hawaii in 22-year-olds Stephanie Kono, Ayaka Kaneko and Wie.

The inaugural LPGA Lotte Championship, which starts Wednesday at Ko Olina Golf Club, will be the tour’s 43rd stop in the islands. The trail goes back to 1982, when Amy Alcott beat JoAnne Carner by a shot to win the first Women’s Kemper Open, at Kaanapali North.

The purse then was $175,000. Thirty years later, Lotte, Korea’s fifth-largest business group with more than 120 corporations around the world, is taking its first LPGA leap with a $1.7 million purse.

That monetary difference is nothing next to the changes the LPGA has undergone. Four of the first five Kemper winners are in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Their names remain familiar — Alcott, Kathy Whitworth, Betsy King, who won five times here, and Juli Inkster, who is still playing.

The look of the Lotte is much more diverse, and the players’ names less memorable. The LPGA is now so young and has gone so global that winners from all over the world are popping up. Fans can’t keep up.

The exception is Taiwan’s Yani Tseng, the hottest women’s golfer in the world for more than two years. She is a year older than Kono, Wie and Kaneko and 12th in career earnings. Tseng has won six of her last 13 starts, including half of this year’s events.

"Golf just seems easier for her," Morgan Pressel says.

Lotte will have all but one of the top 15 golfers in the Rolex World Rankings. Na Yeon Choi, Suzann Pettersen, Cristie Kerr, Ai Miyazato, Jiyai Shin, Stacy Lewis and Paula Creamer are here. So are Karrie Webb, Lexi Thompson and Pressel.

There are five Kims, five Lees and four Parks in the field. And there is Wie, Kono and Kaneko, who are more familiar to Hawaii fans than probably anyone else.

"Stephanie Kono, she’s a great little player," LPGA commissioner Michael Whan says. "Just when you think you know them … I think of Stephanie as UCLA and California and you say she’s from Hawaii and it’s neat. I saw Mindy Kim with a Korean flag and she grew up in California. When you’re out here you almost forget where they are from. It’s just all these 20-something kids."

Whan, hired two years ago, is rolling with the global punches. He has announced five new tournaments for 2012 and expects a sixth before the end of the year. He advises Hawaii fans to come to Ko Olina with a new outlook on his tour.

"When we hang the flags around Ko Olina, you’re going to see 29 or 30 different country flags," he says. "You’re going to see young girls who grew up in all corners of the world. You know, 15 or 20 years ago that was totally unbelievable … and today it’s reality. You’re going to see an Olympic-like event, where you will actually see the best in the world."

"One reason we’re having success is because what the LPGA is going through is similar to what a lot of Fortune 100 companies are going through. They all talk about moving people around to other countries and homesickness and becoming a global brand and I would say ditto. We’re doing the same thing and we’re making some mistakes, but we don’t have anybody to follow. There are no other truly global sports that have figured this all out, certainly not golf. We’re there first. We’re making all the idiot first mistakes, but the outcome is really turning out great because now we have fans and sponsors and web hits from everywhere."

It was not like that in 1982, or five years later when former Rainbow Wahine Cindy Rarick came out of nowhere to win the Tsumura Hawaiian Ladies Open.

In ’92 and ’93, a couple of Canadians (Lisa Walters and Dawn Coe-Jones) swept the Hawaii events, and Spaniard Marta Figueras-Dotti won at Ko Olina in 1994. That was just the beginning.

Annika Sorenstam (Sweden) won three times in Hawaii and Webb (Australia) twice in the last 15 years. Jennifer Rosales, from the Philippines, held off Wie to win the first SBS Open at Turtle Bay. South Koreans Joo Mi Kim and Meena Lee swept the Hawaii tournaments in 2006.

Americans have won five of the last six Hawaii stops — Angela Stanford overcame Wie in the LPGA’s last appearance in 2009 — but that is now a rarity in the LPGA, which has 128 active international players. Going global is the way of its world and one look at the Lotte field confirms it, down to the sponsor invites (You Na Park, Hyun Hwa Sim, Shin Ae Ahn and Hyo Joo Kim from South Korea, and Yu Liu from Beijing).

Two more golfers will join the field after today’s qualifier. Hawaii’s Kimberly Kim, Shayna Miyajima and Britttany Fan are playing, along with South Korea’s Hye-Min Kim. There are also two Hall of Fame slots pending.

Kaneko is anxiously waiting to tee off Wednesday.

"I feel more pressure for sure," says the Sacred Hearts graduate, who has made the past two cuts. "I want to play well. I am representing Hawaii, so I would love to show off a little, but I don’t want to feel too pressured and not be able to enjoy myself out there. It’s still just a game of golf."

Kono, looking to make her first cut, figures she should be in her comfort zone for the first time in her short LPGA career.

"I’ll be more comfortable because I know the course," she says of Ko Olina. "It will be the first time I’ve ever played an LPGA event where I know the course. I’m excited to play in Hawaii, in front of friends and family."