Taiwanese golfer Yani Tseng spent much of last year pulling out of a two-year slump and regaining her confidence and has set her sights this year on winning a medal for Taiwan at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in August.
“Representing Taiwan in the Olympics would be an incredible honor,” Tseng said in a recent interview.
Just qualifying for the women’s golf event, the first time golf will appear at an Olympics since 1904, will be a challenge for the former world No. 1 and depends on how well she and other Taiwanese golfers perform in the first half of the year.
Only 60 players will compete in the men’s and women’s Olympic golf events, with one spot reserved for a player from the host country.
A maximum four players will be allowed per country if they are ranked in the top 15 in the world as of July 11, and a maximum of two per country will qualify otherwise.
The two top Taiwanese players are virtual locks to qualify because of the limits on the number of players who can qualify from a single country, which will leave dozens of South Koreans and Americans out of the event.
The question is, which two? As of Feb. 8, Teresa Lu is ranked 19th in the world, Tseng is ranked 40th and Candie Kung is ranked 45th.
Further down the list with an outside shot are Cheng Ssu-chia, a Ladies European Tour regular at 101st, and Hsu Wei-ling, an LPGA Tour regular at 122nd.
Ideally, Taiwan’s top three all are ranked in the top 15 by July. Otherwise, Tseng will have to maintain the higher level of play she demonstrated last year in the first half of this year to hold off Kung for the second and final spot.
Without knowing whether she will qualify for Rio, Tseng has already told her coaches that she hopes to peak when the Olympics roll around and vie for a medal for Taiwan.
Tseng, who turned 27 on Jan. 23, had something of a revival last year. She changed to a new trainer, a new swing coach and a new sports psychologist at the beginning of the year, and though there were few signs of improvement early, they were obvious by the end of the year.
She improved her ranking from the mid-80s to 38th over the course of last year, boosted by second-place finishes at the Honda LPGA Thailand in February, the Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic in August and the LPGA KEB HanaBank Championship in October.
She also finished fifth at the Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia in early October.
Tseng found her confidence in the second half of the year and was able to walk courses again with “the most sincere smiles,” she said.
Despite her slow start to this year’s LPGA season — she has missed the cut and finished 60th in her first two events — Tseng’s goal is to continue the rebound and keep smiling all the way to Brazil.
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