When Chinese golfer Li Haotong once dreamed about making headlines, he was probably not envisaging the mocking coverage of his mother wading into a water hazard to retrieve his club.
Li, who today turns 22, can giggle now, because it is his game that is making the news after a startling performance at The Open Championship saw him touted as a potential major winner.
Li’s success at Royal Birkdale preceded the historic achievement of his bespectacled countryman Dou Zecheng, who won on the Web.com Tour on Sunday to become the first Chinese to earn a PGA Tour playing card.
China has long been viewed as the next great frontier for emerging golf talent, but that vision has been slow to materialize, at least in the men’s game.
However, golfers such as Li and Dou, 20, are at the forefront of a new generation of young Chinese players waiting to break out.
Their emergence comes despite the Chinese government’s ambivalent attitude toward golf, which was banned under Mao Zedong and is traditionally viewed as bourgeois.
On one hand, Chinese authorities have shut dozens of golf courses — many of them illegal — and curbed new construction, while also warning Chinese Communist Party members about playing the game.
On the other hand, big tournaments such as the US$9.75 million WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, one of the world’s richest golf events, are a regular fixture.
None of this is the concern of Hunan Province native Li, who had to contend with embarrassment in June after the video of his mother, knee-deep in water, swept the Internet.
Frustrated at a poor shot in the HNA Open de France, Li launched the club into a murky pond, only for his mother to roll up her trousers to go and fetch it.
As fellow players watched on in hysterics — apparently unaware that it was Li’s mother — she fished out the club, only to toss it back in after realizing it had snapped.
The incident did nothing to harm Li, who registered China’s best performance in a major after his final round of 63 at The Open placed him third and earned him a spot at the Masters.
“It’s kind of a dream come true,” said Li, who is 66th in the world rankings and has been quietly making a name for himself in recent years.
He turned professional in 2011 and two years later was signed by Nike, joining the likes of Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods with the US brand.
Li captured his first European Tour victory at the Volvo China Open last year before finishing runner-up at the Turkish Airlines Open.
Tenniel Chu, vice chairman of Mission Hills Group, saw Li’s commitment firsthand when he spent his pre-season at the world’s largest golf facility.
“The hard work he puts in and the way he dedicates himself to his game makes me believe he can win a major,” Chu said, also identifying Liu Yanwei, 20, and Zhang Huilin as possible world-beaters.
Dou, who spent some of his childhood in Vancouver, grabbed a slice of history over the weekend by becoming the first Chinese to win on the Web.com Tour, the PGA’s development tour, earning his PGA Tour card in the process.
Veteran sports writer Spencer Robinson said that Li and Dou “have all the ingredients required to go to the very top, scaling golfing peaks that no mainland Chinese male golfers have previously come close to.”
Robinson said the duo were distinct from “pioneers” Zhang Lianwei and Liang Wenchong, who enjoyed success without getting to the top.
Then there are the female golfers. Feng Shanshan was the first Chinese to win a major, and has a growing number of domestic rivals.
“Beyond that, it’s no exaggeration to say there are dozens of supremely gifted Chinese youngsters in their early teens, and even younger, who are being groomed for golfing greatness,” Robinson said.
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