Editor's note: Mark Rolfing is probably best recognized as one of NBC Sports' on-course golf analyst, but Rolfing has made himself something of a golfing fixture on the Hawaiian islands. Golf Press Association publisher Alex Miceli recently sat down with Rolfing to talk about the circuitous route his life has taken in the past 25 to 30 years.

Q.: Talk about when you first came to the Hawaii, because you're not known as Mr. Hawaii, but you're certainly known for being part of the golf culture here. So when did you first come here?

MARK ROLFING: Well, I had played the Asian Tour and also the Hawaiian Open in 1975. And I had missed the Q-School in '74, and decided to give it one more try in '75. And missed. I was fairly close, but I think I started realizing at that point that I'm just not sure this is it. I played the European Tour that year [in 1975] and I played 35 events maybe, and made about $25,000 dollars. Spent about $50,000 to do it. So I decided to come back because I had liked Hawaii. It was the first time I had been here and to just spend a week and sort of chill out, and try and figure out what I wanted to do.

So I went to Maui and I spent three or four days there and kind of fell in love with the island. And went to Kanapoli, which was the main resort at the time … went into the pro shop to see if they had any jobs open. And they didn't. So they sent me up to Kapalua, which had just opened like two or three months before. And there was nothing there except a little rickety old pro shop, temporary pro shop. I asked them if they had anything available and they said no, not at the moment, but there might be something. If I wanted it, I could start out in the cart barn, basically taking care of carts; washing carts and stuff.

And so I thought about it for about an hour, went outside and said, OK. Went back to the mainland, got my stuff, flew back, moved into a 400-square-foot apartment, bought myself a light blue station wagon with no back window -- an old Dodge -- and off I was.

Q.: How long did it take you to move out of the cart barn?

MARK ROLFING: It didn't take long. I moved into the pro shop probably within six weeks. And the thing was, I was still by far the best player on the island. And so my whole ticket was that when important people would come around, they would send me out to play golf with them, regardless of what level I was at in the company.

So I became the assistant pro and within probably a year-and-a-half or two I was the head pro. And then the director of golf. And things were starting to sort of happen development-wise at the resort. All of a sudden, I'm playing golf with Arnold Palmer, who is designing the Village Course, which was the second course. And playing with President [Gerald] Ford, I remember, and Mark McCormack, who owned a condo there. And I started moving fast, but it was still because of my ability to play golf.

Q.: So then you became actually involved in some of the property development at Kapalua?

MARK ROLFING: I was. The key for me, I think probably was when I started the postseason Kapalua event, which was 1982.

I had become sort of the director of recreation and marketing at the resort, which is the job Gary Planos has now with the exception he doesn't have the marketing aspect of it.

It was a way smaller company back then. And Kapalua was struggling, to be honest with you. It was located at the end of the road and it was windy, and there wasn't any real reason for people to go there. And I just kept looking at the Hawaiian Open and seeing what that did for Wailae Country Club and it was ironic because nobody could play Wailae.

There were 50 people a day checking into the Kahalua, going across the street wanting to play golf and they couldn't, because they had seen Wailae on TV. So when I started the Kapalua tournament in 1982, it kind of introduced me to the world of big-time golf, television people, players and agents and things like that.

Shortly thereafter I got involved with a group that actually bought the hotel at Kapalua. Then shortly after that got involved in the development of the Plantation Course, which was in the late '80s. So things just sort of mushroomed.

So it was still pretty much all golf driven.

Q.: So how does the relationship you had with the Kapalua tournament and meeting the TV people … is that how you eventually got into television?

MARK ROLFING: No, the television thing was a total fluke. It was just unbelievable, because you've got to remember this was 1985. And back then you had the three major networks and ESPN. That was about it.

And the analysts were Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus … you pretty much had to have won a major. And this was even pre-Gary McCord; there was no Gary McCord then.

Anyway, I was playing in the Kapalua tournament in 1985 and, on Friday -- the tournament was on ESPN and NBC that year -- it was Vin Scully and Lee Trevino [in the 18th hole booth]. I played a good round on Friday, sort of a fluke round because I wasn't that great a player, but it was low enough that the network decided 'OK, lets interview the guy.'

So I went up to the booth and the producer at the time was Don Ohlymeyer. Back then pretty much if a player came up to the booth, they asked you two or three questions and you were gone. They didn't have guests or situations like you see now. But Peter Jacobson was out on the 16th hole on the Bay Course and had hit a ball into the hazard, which is a hazard that goes pretty much right down the center of the fairway. And Trevino could not figure out what was going on. They didn't really know. I had just played the hole and so to make a long story short, I sat in there for about 20 minutes trying to explain and Vinny was just asking me what kind of hazard is it and what are his options and all this. And so I just sort of took over and Lee was motioning with hands to go on, go on, go on. So when I left the booth, Don Ohlymeyer left me a message to call him.

So I called him and he said, 'You were phenomenal. Why don't you come back tomorrow?' And I said, 'Regardless of what I shoot?' He said, 'Absolutely, regardless of what you shoot. I want you in that booth tomorrow.'

So I came back the next day for two segments on Saturday with Vinny and Lee. And I did the same thing then on Sunday. So basically I had three days that I did that and he came up to the 18th tower when I was done on Sunday and asked me if I wanted to work the World Cup the following week in Palm Springs as an on-course commentator.

I didn't know what to say. I said, 'What do you mean work?' He said I would be out on the course announcing golf. I said sure and so I went to Palm Springs the next week and it was just hysterical. When I

look at the tape now, I had never done anything like that. It was great.

They had a little initiation for me. Don was producing and Jeff Mason was the director, who later became the executive producer of ABC Sports.

So they had me doing all sorts of stuff. First thing I had to do was go interview the Japanese team and neither of the Ozaki brothers spoke any English. And they weren't even in the top half of the field. So I have to go interview them. And I can hear these guys just howling in the truck.

Then I got to go down to the putting green and ask Lanny Watkins for an interview right before he and Tom Kite are going it tee off, which they knew darn well Wadkins would rather punch me than do that. But somehow I made it through the week and Ohlymeyer offered me a job full-time for the next year.

Q.: So you were at NBC for how long?

MARK ROLFING: Well, I started at ESPN. I was at ESPN in 1986 and '87, and then I got the call from Larry Cirillo at NBC, sort of midway through the '87 season. Would I be interested in NBC? And I was just blown away. I just couldn't believe it.

Q.: So you were with NBC for how long?

MARK ROLFING: I was with them from '88 to '91. I left in '91 right after the Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island, and went to ABC for six years and then back to NBC in '98. So I've been seven years now back with NBC. That was pretty interesting because you don't ever do that. You don't ever leave a network and end up coming back. I wasn't really very happy at the end at ABC, my role had changed. They wanted me to be more of an analyst and I was in a tower, although it wasn't even a tower, it was a box in the compound. And that just really wasn't me.

Q.: Dave Marr about the same time, didn't he?

MARK ROLFING: He came a little ahead of me. He came in, I think, 1995.

Q.: Another unhappy ABC employee?

MARK ROLFING: Yeah, well ABC golf at that time was really pretty much in disarray. There were lots of changes going on. They couldn't really figure out what their identity was. They tried all sorts of different things. It just didn't have the kind of comfortable feeling I had at NBC.

Q.: Of all the people that have done golf on television right now, you're one of the few that's done it for this long. How different is golf on television when you first started to where it is today?

MARK ROLFING: First of all, when I first started, you were on two days -- Saturday and Sunday -- for two hours. I think my first announcing team at ESPN had three announcers, Roger Twibel, Bruce Devlin in the booth and me on the course. So it was pretty easy.

Now you look at some of the weeks, like the big weeks for us [at NBC], we're on sometimes eight or 10 hours a day … on a Thursday. And then, on top of that, typically I'm doing Golf Channel stuff after. So it's a lot more work, but it's just such a better product now. I think that's been one of the reasons why the game has surged in popularity, because watching golf on TV when I started was really pretty boring.

I think now television has been a big part of making it exciting, getting the fans feeling like they're interacting with the game. So it's changed a lot.

Q.: Would you have envisioned any of this when you moved to Hawaii in 1980?

MARK ROLFING: No, I wouldn't have dreamed it. I had no background in television or journalism or marketing or anything like that. My bachelor's degree when I came out of the college was political science. So think about that strange combination.

But I'll never forget, my biggest concern was whether people were going to accept me as an expert on television. I really didn't see a reason why they would because I didn't have the playing record. The biggest tournaments I had ever won were things like the Maui Open, for crying out loud. But it was interesting. I thought, 'OK, what am I going to be like.'

And Don Ohlmeyer gave me the greatest advice early on. He said just be yourself. Don't try and do anything, don't try and be funny, don't try and come up with a schtick of some kind, don't try and be an expert in one particular area like either instruction or whatever it is. He said just be yourself and you'll be a star if you do that, people will accept you, don't worry about it. And I was tempted at times to kind of go in a little bit of a different direction, but I sort of never did.

And so even though I didn't really develop an identity, people did accept me. Frankly, one of the biggest breaks came from Rudy Martzke [the USA Today sports television columnist] in 1990. For him to name me the best on course commentator in golf after only three years in ahead of some, by then, pretty good names. That is a way overrated thing, but frankly, it drives a lot of decisions, particularly at the network level.