At Bulle Rock Golf Course in Havre de Grace, Maryland on the late afternoon of June 8, everyone held their breath, ready to witness the birth of a new star. Yani Tseng made a superb and decisive putt, leaving other golfers both frustrated and stunned, including Lorena Ochoa, the 27-year-old Mexican player heading the world rankings for women's golf. Finishing with a total of 276, or 12 under par, the 19-year-old Tseng claimed the 2008 McDonald's Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Championship. In doing so, she became the first player from Taiwan to win a major event held by the LPGA, the US organization in charge of tournaments for top-notch female golfers around the world.
Tseng's win also came as something of a surprise because she is still a rookie. She entered the professional arena only at the beginning of 2007 and qualified for LPGA matches at the start of this year. The last time a rookie claimed an LPGA major was a win by South Korean player Si Re Pak in 1998. Actually only three Asians, Tseng, Pak and Hisako Higuchi, have ever won an LPGA major match. As well as winning prize money of US$300,000, Tseng also scored 300 points in the professional rankings, pushing her to number three in the world. The achievement has made Taiwan proud and her performance is considered a boost to the development of the sport back home.
"Many people thought she would be a star, but few expected to see that happen in her first year in America," says Melanie Huang, general manager of the Sunrise Golf and Country Club, which sponsored Tseng with accommodation, board and full-time training while the golfer was still an amateur player. "We thought it would take two or three years for her to adapt to a totally strange environment in the States and then show her real strength."
While Yani Tseng's recent performance has been outstanding, however, she is not the first golfer from Taiwan to achieve international fame. "Taiwanese golfers first shone in the world in the 1960s," says Jennifer Wei, senior editor of the Taiwan edition of Golf Digest, a major monthly on golf sold worldwide. Male golfers were the first to perform especially well at international events, such as Lu Liang-huan, the runner-up at the 1971 British Open, one of the four major tournaments held by the Professional Golf Association (PGA), the LPGA equivalent for professional male golfers. The achievement was equaled by Chen Tze-chung who came in second at the US Open in 1985, another PGA major. To this day, no Asian golfer has won a PGA major.
When it comes to female golfers, Tu Ai-yu was a household name, especially in Japan, in the 1980s. Winning a total of 71 championship titles at Japanese golf tournaments, she still holds the record for the most prize money earned in Japan by a female golfer from Taiwan.
According to Jennifer Wei, in the past, many talented golfers started their careers as caddies working at the Taiwan Golf Club in Danshui, north of Taipei, in contrast to the situation today when many youngsters receive professional training from an early age. "Today, most young golfers receive formal training with the support of their wealthy parents," Wei says.
Eva Chang, the first female professional golfer from Taiwan to qualify for an LPGA tournament in 1977, recalls her experience practicing at the Danshui golf course.
"Most of the time I learned on my own, and I improved by watching the professionals playing golf," says Chang, 58. She was not a caddie at the club, but she was often seen around the course because her parents worked there. A wealthy member of the club saw her potential and decided to provide her with financial assistance, setting her on the road to becoming one of Taiwan's outstanding golfers.
Green Concerns
Developed during the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945) and opened in 1919, Taiwan Golf Club is the oldest club in Taiwan. The second oldest still in operation, Taipei Golf Club, came into existence in 1954 with support from influential individuals including military generals and tycoons. The club was initially located in downtown Taipei and then moved to Linkou, a suburban area west of the capital. About seven golf courses were opened one after another around Taiwan from 1926 to 1937, but they fell into disrepair after the end of the World War II and were never restored.
The establishment of the Republic of China Golf Committee in 1956, now the Golf Association of the ROC, was of great significance because it arranged for Taiwanese professional golfers to travel abroad for international events. The association organizes year-round competitions for junior players and amateurs, and since 1965 has been the host of the Taiwan Open for professional players, although the event has been cancelled for the last two years due to lack of sponsorship.
"Taiwan was the golf kingdom of Asia 20 years ago, performing better than any other Asian country in this sport," says Hsu Tien-ya, deputy director of the Golf Association of the ROC since 2005 and president of the Sunrise Group, which owns the Sunrise Golf and Country Club. "Foreign VIPs invited to Taiwan usually felt greatly honored if they had the chance to play with Taiwanese pros," he says.
Meanwhile, with the development of Taiwan's economy, more and more people have taken up the sport, which has long been seen as a pastime for the wealthy few. "You don't have to exert yourself too much when playing golf. That means the sport can be a lifetime hobby," says Robert Wei, who started to play golf 15 years ago. "Plus, every golf course is a unique sight. It's very enjoyable to admire the landscapes and seascapes while playing golf," he says.
A teenager receives training from veteran golfer Eva Chang at the Sunrise Golf and Country Club. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Like many golf lovers, Robert Wei took up the sport for business reasons--he found he could build good relations with clients over a round of golf--before developing a personal interest in it. Even today he still hosts guests from time to time on behalf of his company.
Jennifer Wei from Golf Digest elaborates on that aspect of the game. "In earlier times, Taiwanese people tended to talk business and build relations in nightclubs. Then they found it's healthier and probably even less expensive to do so on the golf course," she says.
The number of golf courses correspondingly increased during the 1970s, and by 1981 the Ministry of Education announced regulations on their operation. However, since a golf course usually covers a large area of land, it was not uncommon for developers to face protests from environmental protection activists at the time. Protesters blamed developers for destroying the natural environment and criticized government authorities for allowing them to do so.
Club owner Hsu Tien-ya dismisses the concerns, saying investors pour large amounts of capital into developing a course, and would not risk that investment. "It costs hundreds of millions NT dollars to build a golf course. There's no reason for me to destroy the environment and cause harm to my course," he says.
Still, on January 1, 1990 the government announced it was suspending approvals for new golf courses. Currently, Taiwan has 67 golf courses, most of them in northern Taiwan, especially in Taoyuan County. Of those clubs, Jennifer Wei says there are about four high-level courses on the island, including Sunrise, which charges non-members NT$3,892 (US$122) on holidays and NT$2,520 (US$78) on weekdays for green fees and caddy fees.
Despite the cost, it is cheaper to play golf in Taiwan than in Japan, South Korea or mainland China, Jennifer Wei adds. This is one of the reasons why Sunrise has succeeded in attracting Korean golfers since the club first participated in tourism exhibitions in Seoul and Busan in 2006. South Koreans are beginning to appear more frequently at Sunrise as part of group tours, especially during winter when it is too cold to play golf in their country, according to Melanie Huang, who estimates the visitors account for one third of the club's customers in that season.
This is good news, especially as Jennifer Wei says that running a golf course is becoming more of a challenge. "Some operators told me their revenues have decreased by 20 percent annually from last year," Wei says. She estimates that there were about 1 million people in Taiwan playing golf in the 1990s, but the number started to decline as more and more businesspeople--a major customer group for golf operators--moved to mainland China.
"Golfers also have to pay amusement tax to local government, which is as much as 10 percent of the fee they pay for the use of the course," Hsu Tien-ya says. In the past, tax was levied on patrons of bowling alleys, pool halls and golf courses under the Amusement Tax Act. An amendment to the act in 2007 exempted the first two places, but golf courses are still taxed. Hsu would like to see that situation change in the future. "The government doesn't give enough support to the development of golf, which is a sport, not a form of amusement," he says.
Professional Support
Meanwhile, professional golfers from Taiwan failed to make much of an impression in the world golf scene after peaking in the 1970s, for men, and the 1980s, for women. During the 1990s not a single Taiwanese golfer competed in any of the four major tournaments of either the PGA or the LPGA. The situation started to change from the early 2000s, especially when Taiwan-born Candie Kung, who started playing golf only after moving to the United States at age 14, won three LPGA titles in 2003. Yani Tseng followed with wins in high-profile amateur events and then several professional wins up to her greatest victory to date at the Bulle Rock Golf Course in June.
In general, however, Hsu Tien-ya thinks Taiwan now lags behind its neighbors Japan and Thailand, not to mention South Korea, whose women golfers have already made a formidable impression on LPGA tournaments. Melanie Huang elaborates, saying "South Korean golfers are strong mainly because large enterprises like Samsung and LG offer long-term sponsorships to promising individuals."
In Taiwan, Mercuries Corporation has held the Mercuries Taiwan Masters for professionals annually since 1987, now the best known and most important golf competition on the island. Acer, the well-known computer brand, sponsored the Taiwan Open from 2001 to 2003, and has financed events for amateurs in cooperation with golf courses around the island since 2002. China Airlines has provided free air travel since 2002 for amateur players competing in international matches, of which Yani Tseng was a beneficiary before she turned professional at the start of 2007.
These efforts notwithstanding, Huang thinks there is no comparison between the level of corporate sponsorship in Taiwan and that in South Korea. Fortunately, young Taiwanese golfers can still look to the high-level performance of Yani Tseng for encouragement and as a role model.
Hsu Tien-ya says the Golf Association also works to cultivate the next generation of golf talent. In addition to Hsu's role as the association's deputy director, since 2001 he has also led the group's efforts to develop young players in the sport. Currently, there are around 200 young players whose performances have received recognition from the association, qualifying them to use 40 golf courses around Taiwan for free or at a low cost. Hsu's company provides full sponsorship to four hand-picked teenage golfers including accommodation and board as part of an intensive, live-in training program, just as it did for Yani Tseng between 2001 and 2006.
"Some of them are really good," Hsu says, "I can see their future." Indeed, with 19-year-old Tseng setting an example for even younger players, there seems to be a chance to create another era of glory for golf in Taiwan.
Up to Par: The Story of a Promising Rookie
Yani Tseng, a rookie golfer with great ambition and determination (Courtesy of Sunrise Golf and Country Club)
Born in 1989 to golf-loving parents who played the game for years before her birth, Yani Tseng had a good chance of falling in love with the sport. Her father, the owner of an oil transport company, often used a round or two of golf as an opportunity to talk business with customers and build connections. This led to his wife picking up the game and later influenced their daughter to follow suit. The little girl developed an interest in the sport as early as age 5 and entered her first official competition just two years later. The event was a domestic competition for teenagers and at age 7 Yani Tseng was the youngest player in the 12-year-old and under category. While the youngster did not place in the top three, she did show a talent for the sport.
With full support from her parents, who hired coaches for her from the age of 6, Tseng practiced regularly on a golf course in Linkou. At 12, Tseng was already an impressive golfer but had yet to qualify for Taiwan's national golf team prior to the 2002 Busan Asian Games in South Korea. However, the team was preparing for the games at the Sunrise Golf and Country Club in Yangmei, Taoyuan County, designated by the Golf Association of the ROC as the National Golf Training Center, and Tseng was allowed to train with the national players because Hsu Tien-ya, president of the Sunrise Group, which owns the golf club, saw her potential to be a good golfer.
"She was unlike other trainees. She could be very rebellious and stubborn. When she was unhappy, she simply talked back and pulled a long face," Melanie Huang, the club's general manager, recalls of the days Tseng trained there from 2001-2006. "On the other hand, she knew her own mind. Both she and her father had long set the goal of her becoming a professional and competing in the States." Tseng kept practicing at Sunrise until the 2006 Doha Asian Games in which she placed fourth in the women's individual event. She was also part of the women's team, which took the bronze medal at the games.
Before Tseng became a professional golfer on January 1, 2007, she had already started to draw the attention of the golf world by winning important amateur championships in the United States, the country that dominates the development of the sport. Successes include the 2004 US Women's Public Links Championship organized by the United States Golf Association and one of the three major competitions for amateurs worldwide, at which Tseng made a name for herself by defeating Michelle Wie, a Korean-American player who was generally seen as the star of the future.
Tseng has now added several professional championship titles to her resumé starting with the 2007 Women's Indian Open just three months after turning professional. She was the recipient of this year's best female athlete award granted in September by the ROC's Sports Affairs Council.
Her win in June at the 2008 McDonald's LPGA Championship also made her the first ethnic Chinese winner of an LPGA major. Since then she has set her sights on the other LPGA majors--the Kraft Nabisco Championship, US Women's Open and Ricoh British Open.
"I want to be the first ethnic Chinese to win all four LPGA majors, and the first ethnic Chinese to enter the World Golf Hall of Fame," Tseng said in an interview with Golf Digest at the start of the year. To date, only four players in the world have won all of the LPGA's major titles and no one has done so in a single year. Tseng, however, has already shown great potential at an early age and most importantly, she is determined and ambitious, which could prove to be the key to making those dreams a reality.
--Oscar Chung
Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw