Asia's Next Major Champion

BY Grant Dodd | 21 Sep 2009

In 2007 I was invited to commentate in Thailand for The Royal Trophy, a Ryder Cup style event over three days pitting the best Asian players against the best from Europe. On display was a serious line-up of talent. Clarke, Westwood, Stenson, McGinley and Edfors were amongst a stellar group of Europeans competing against a strong Asian contingent that included Jeev Milkha Singh and Thongchai Jaidee.

Having spent a good deal of time playing tournament golf in Asia, I knew a number of the players and their games quite well. However, a few who had been chosen from the Japan Tour were something of a mystery to me. As part of my research and preparation, I gave Paul Sheehan a call.

Sheehan is an Aussie who has plied his trade succesfully in Japan for a number of years, winning the prestigious Japan Open in 2006. One of the first players I inquired about was a relatively unknown Korean, Y.E. Yang.

“He’s a star”, came the reply. “Hits it long, putts beautifully. He’s got Top 20 in the world type game.”

In the often inward looking world of professional golf, it is uncommon to find someone being so openly effusive about the abilities of a peer. At the event, I could see however why Sheehan held such a high opinion. Yang’s game was rock solid, with a consistent right to left ball flight and an unflappable temperament. Despite being in a team that was demolished by the Europeans, it was plain to see that he had something above and beyond the norm.

Paul Sheehan’s words seem positively prescient now given Yang’s heroics in winning the 2009 US PGA. In doing so, he became the new poster boy for Asian golf, finally putting an end to the ageless question of who would be the first Asian player to achieve that milestone.

It has been widely held that once this bridge had been crossed, others would follow. However, the current stars of Asian golf are in their late thirties and forties, whilst the heir’s apparent are still sorting themselves out. The question remains, where will the next Asian major champion come from?

When Se Ri Pak burst onto the scene in the U.S., Korean womens golf was but a blip on the radar. Pak’s superb play over the next decade captured the imagination of a nation and energised a boom in Korean womens golf. That boom now manifests itself in dramatic ways, with over forty Korean born players holding cards on the LPGA Tour .

The same sense of conquest and ambition seems yet to take hold of the male psyche in South Korea, for whilst they have always had a very strong domestic mens tour their players have shown great reluctance to travel.

A few of their legendary names like Park Nam Sin and Choi Sang Ho were certainly good enough to make a mark outside of their homeland. However, they rarely left, deciding instead to stay in their cultural comfort zone and enjoy the substantial rewards available to them as kings of their own castle.

This behaviour was more or less seen as the default position until KJ Choi hit the scene in the late 1990’s. Choi’s stellar play on the U.S. Tour made him a trailblazer. Y.E. Yang has followed, and whilst he is arguably still the lower profile player, the significance of his recent achievement will have likely have even more dramatic consequences for the future of both Asian and Korean golf.

Already, the next generation of Korean stars are starting to make their mark. Of them, Noh Seung Yul is barely 18 but shows a precocious level of talent that has already seen him win on the Asian Tour. He reels off Top 10 finishes with monotonous regularity and a number of good judges speak of his game in glowing terms. Bae Sang Moon, still only 22, is the other name to be reckoned with and if Korea is to be the provider of the next Asian major champion then, exempting KJ Choi and YE Yang, these two tyro’s seem the most likely suspects.

No debate on the future stars of Asian golf can be credible without reference to Ryo Ishikawa. He won on the Japan Tour at the age of 15, and is now a bonafide superstar in his homeland with five wins to his credit. When he debuted at the 2009 Masters at Augusta, the tournament organisers received over 200 requests for media accreditation from the Japanese press corps. The hype is huge, and he can back it up. At 18, and possessed of a technically pure golf swing and fierce competitiveness, Ishikawa is a major force to be reckoned with for many years to come.

Of the established Asian stars, time may be running out for a few. In the Thai brigade, Prayad Marksaeng is playing some of the best golf of his career in his early 40’s, and much like his talismanic countryman, Boonchu Ruangkit, may turn out to be the ultimate late bloomer.

The best major hope for the Thai’s however is Thongchai Jaidee. The forty year old is by any estimation a class player. The 51st ranked player in the world is also showing a greater willingness to travel, and the former paratrooper lacks nothing in mental toughness. The Thai’s too have a wealth of serious young talent coming through, the best of them being Chinnarat Phadungsil and Chapchai Nirat. Both are in their early twenties, and winners on the Asian Tour, but still need to prove themselves out of their comfort zone to be considered major contenders.

The other joker in the pack is India. Jeev Milkha Singh and Arjun Atwal have been the highest profile players for over a decade. Neither looks like a lock to contend in a major, although Singh’s unorthodox yet mercurial game has flashes of such astonishing brilliance that it would not be a total surprise to see him pop up and win. The USPGA championship, prone to delivering upsets with its stylised and formuliac course set ups would seem to be his best chance.

Following in Singh’s footsteps comes an array of young hopefuls, headed by the 21 year old, Gaganjeet Bhullar. Bhullar has already won on the Asian Tour this year and sits securely in the Top 10 on the Asian money list. He’s the most likely of the new Indian brigade, but with the rapid socio-economic changes taking place in India set to open up greater access to golf it may well be a matter of ’watch this space.’

Finally, the biggest ’X factor’ in all of Asia is of course China. The hard working Liang Wen-Chong is the standout Chinese player of the day, but at 31 is yet to show major winning form, notwithstanding the fact that he won the Asian Tour money list in 2007.

But on potential alone, it is hard to imagine that a day won’t come when China is not a dominant force in professional golf. In a sea of scenario’s and possibilities, the unanswerable ’China question’ remains the great intangible.

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