Tilbake
til første side Debattsiden
 Blir
14 år gamle Apple Yang Jiaxin en kommende golfstjerne?
16.03 De nye golfstjernene kommer fra Kina:
Golf på kinesisk
I 1984 fantes det ikke en eneste golfbane i Kina. Nå kryr det nærmest av baner,
og kineserne har begynt å sette sitt grep på internasjonal golf. Golfledere,
proer og andre interessert kan ha stor glede av å lese denne artikkelen fra Tim
Maitland. Han forteller blant annet at Mission Hills med sine 216 hull snart er
det 3. største anlegget i Kina.
Når først Kina satser, blir det vanskelig for mange andre nasjoner å følge med i
timen.
Artikkelen er litt lang, men ganske tankevekkende:
Seeing Stars!
The world’s local bank has just announced it is renewing its sponsorship of the
HSBC China Junior Program for another three years. Tim Maitland investigates how
the first formal structure for the development of China’s future stars is
helping the “Middle Kingdom” groom its golfers.
Almost regardless of what angle you look from, trying to truly understand the
speed of the development of golf as a sport in China is a head-spinning
experience.
Fra null i 1984
From zero golf until 1984 to the point now where Mission Hills’ 216-hole complex
near Shenzhen is officially recognized as the world’s largest golf course, –
although the far less well-known Nanshan International Golf Club in Shandong has
279 holes and presumably some kind of claim to that title – the next Mission
Hills development on Hainan Island is believed to be planning 22 courses with a
potential 396 holes.
From zero officially recognized professionals until 1994 to having a first
winner on the European Tour (Zhang Lianwei) in 2003, a first Asian Tour order of
merit winner (Liang Wenchong) in 2007, a first player on the US collegiate
circuit (Han Ren, Indiana University) in 2007, and a first player on the LPGA
(Jenny Feng Shanshan) in 2008…to put it into motoring terms, it’s nought to 90
in a nanosecond.
Who the top players are and where they come from is also changing faster than a
hummingbird flaps its wings.
Framveksten av spillerne i fem trinn
Generation by generation one can generalize: First come those plucked from the
ranks of golf course workers (Zhang); second, those picked as players of
potential from the paddy fields (Liang); and third, those born into money,
raised on golf courses their fathers owned (Wang Minghao, now at Georgia Tech,
and neopro James Su Dong) or groomed for stardom at the IMG Academy in Florida
(Hu Mu). Where the trickle becomes a flood is when the sons and daughters of
golfers start to learn, play and compete within a proper national structure.
That flood is generation four, or even five, which is where the HSBC China
Junior Golf Program plays its part.
“Since we first entered into the partnership with HSBC in 2007, we have been
able to build a structure and a framework to develop and grow the grassroots of
the game. We have the platform of elite-level junior tournaments and we also
have the camps and schools projects to expand the base, to increase the overall
number of children being introduced to the sport,” says Zhang Xiaoning,
Secretary General of the China Golf Association.
“What we’re now seeing is a maturing of that structure and a growth of the golf
industry around it. We have more school teachers able to teach the basic
fundamentals, we have more coaches working with children, and we have more
children competing at the top level of junior golf. Above that, the junior
national team is more and more active, especially since golf was accepted into
the Olympics, and the junior players are starting to dominate the national
amateur tour. The Greater China Tour, has been revamped, with the OneAsia events
and at the very pinnacle the WGC-HSBC Champions,” Zhang adds.
Resultatene kommer
The list of achievements for the juniors is mounting, too. Kevin Ou Zhijun, a
two-time winner on the HSBC National Junior Championships in 2008, won the 2009
HSBC China Junior Open and became the first graduate to turn professional. That
move in itself is proving both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. The
inspiration is proof to his contemporaries that they can graduate to the
professional ranks. The cautionary tale is one that will be all too familiar in
some of the other Asian golfing nations, such as Thailand, where the financial
pressures on the families has arguably forced too many promising young players
to turn professional before they were ready. Ou Zhijun missed the cut three
times in his appearances on the 2009 Omega China Tour.
Meanwhile on the open-age amateur circuit – the CITIC China Amateur Tour – Zhang
Jin, then 13, Liu Yu, then 13, and Apple Yang Jiaxin, 14, were among the four
juniors to win events, with Liu winning twice and Yang claiming the overall
Order of Merit (See individual profiles).
“This is the legacy of the WGC-HSBC Champions,” declared Giles Morgan, HSBC
Group Head of Sponsorship.
“For us there would be no point creating Asia’s best tournament and spearheading
the arrival of world-class golf in the region, if there were no long-term
contribution to the sport to go along with it. That philosophy starts with the
way we do business in Asia’s rapidly emerging markets and has to apply to the
way we enter into the business of sponsorship.”
For HSBC, one of the most significant achievements is less tangible. By helping
the CGA create a platform of regular tournaments they are seeing more and more
parents placing their children under the guidance of professional golf coaches,
but just as importantly, they are seeing the parents themselves becoming more
and more willing to be guided by those professionals, too.
“The parents of the children currently competing in the HSBC National Junior
Championship are, in their own way, pathfinders for golf in China, in much the
same way that Zhang Lianwei was the pathfinder for China’s professional golfers.
These are the first parents to introduce their own children to golf in China,
the first to find a passion for the sport and share it with their offspring, and
the first to guide their children along the path towards a career as tournament
golfers,” Morgan explains.
“By hiring a coach, these parents are, for the first time in many cases, able to
draw on the experience of professionals who are able to give them a more defined
picture of their child’s growth and development in golf, and how it connects to
the child’s personal development and the development of the child-parent
relationship. As a result we’re seeing some really good decisions being made in
the long-term interests of the children, as children as well as golfers.”
The change is significant. Well-informed choices made now could be the
difference between these fourth and fifth generations of golfers – currently
kids aged between 6 and 17 – sparkling briefly or going on to have long, stable
successful careers as golfers. There’s still a long way for them to go –
realistically even the oldest of them are at least three or four years away from
being consistently competitive amongst the professionals – but the framework is
there for them. Now they just have to keep growing.
Different Values, Same Thirst for Success.
By simply extrapolating the extraordinary achievements of the golfers China has
already produced in a period when the sport was truly in its infancy and
projecting an increase in the scale of future achievements to match the stunning
growth in golf courses and golfing infrastructure, it does not take much
imagination to expect a Chinese player to be up amongst the world’s greats in
the not-too-distant future.
That golfer may be among the ranks of the children currently competing in the
HSBC National Junior Championship. Realistically, though, it is likely to be
another eight years before the children profiled have matured as both golfers
and people to the extent that they can compete amongst the world’s best and, as
one coach put it succinctly, a lot can go wrong in eight years.
At the same time, their pathfinder - China’s first LPGA Tour player Jenny Feng
Shanshan - is sure there will be more like her very soon.
“Oh, yeah, they are really good; they are! I feel a little pressure, too,
because they are coming and also I'm pushing myself to play a little better,”
Feng declares.
“I think there are a lot of good ones, especially the girls. The Chinese girls,
they are really good; like Liu Yu, I think she's good and some of the girls from
Guangzhou, from the same hometown as me. So I'm sure they will come. Just need
to wait. Be patient, they will come.
And maybe at that time I'll feel old; old, old, old,” adds the 20-year-old with
a laugh.
Navn å merke seg for fremtiden:
The following profiles highlight some of the more successful juniors in China.
They do not seek to hold any of the individuals up as the next Tiger or Lorena –
that is an unfair burden on any teenager – but simply to illustrate who they are,
where they come from, how they are developing and their different points of view
and different values.
Apple Yang Jiaxin
Born: 10th April, 1995 Beijing
Lives: Beijing
Won the 2009 CITIC Order of Merit
HSBC National Junior Ranking End of 2009
Number 1, Girls Group B (b1994-1996)
Winner 2009 CITIC China Amateur Tour, Order of Merit
Winner 2009 CITIC China Amateur Tour, Hangzhou Leg
HSBC National Junior Championship wins (4):
2009 Girls Group A, Final, Shanghai; Girls Group A, Kunming Leg.
2008 Girls Group A, Final, Shanghai; Girls Group B, Zhengzhou Leg.
If there is a poster girl for the growing wisdom and understanding among China’s
golfing families, Apple, a laid-back and witty Beijinger, is it. In 2009 she had
phenomenal success, winning twice on the HSBC National Junior Championship and
claiming a leg of the national amateur tour and the overall order of merit. But
it was not sustainable. In successive weeks in November, as a 14 year old, she
won against the adults in Hangzhou and then defended her title at the HSBC
National Junior Championship Finals playing against girls up to three years
older than her. Yet there was no sense of joy or enjoyment, not even a quiet
sense of satisfaction.
Now, however, she smiles and laughs and cracks jokes in fluent English. For the
first time since she first picked up a golf club, she had an entire month away
from the sport over the winter. She’s refreshed, relaxed and happy…and still
playing well.
“Last year I played so many tournaments and me and my mum looked at it like it
was our whole life, but junior golf is not life… you’re not going to die if you
don’t win a tournament. It’s just an experience and you should enjoy it. Last
year I just went play, play, play like a robot,” she recalls.
Now she’s smiling, and her golf conversations are littered with words like
“enjoy” and “fun”, thanks to the intervention of new coach Billy Martin, the
head coach at Beijing’s Qinghe Golf Club, and the club’s co-owner Wang Tao.
“She works so hard on her game and she’s so tough on herself; she may be too
tough at times. We have to let her loosen up and have some fun. She wants to
practice until 10 o’clock at night. People think you have to practice 10 hours a
day and that’s not true. If your muscles don’t have time to repair, and that
includes your brain, you become dull,” says Martin, an American, who spent 10
years as Director of Instruction and Director of Education at Jack Nicklaus Golf
Centers in Japan and Korea before moving to China.
“My coach and Mr. Wang, one of the bosses of Qinghe Bay, told my mum not to push
me as much. He said, ”she’s working hard, she wants to be good”, and my mum
understands and has tried to learn. It’s a good start. It’s helped me a lot.
“My mum used to give me some pressure and I gave myself some pressure… so I was
always under pressure. Now I’m more relaxed. It seems my mental things got
improved. When the mental things improve, the mechanical [things] improve – the
skill things – because you’re not tight, you’re not nervous, you’re not quick.
‘Quick’ is my old friend: a very bad friend,” she laughs.
Having passed her exams, playing catch-up due to having spent only half as much
time in school as her classmates, at the beginning of 2010, Apple says her focus
this year will be more balanced between golf and schoolwork.
“This year I’ll study more with my friends. If you learn Maths and Chemistry,
you can’t make iron or put strange things together and go “boom”. You have to
learn the way to study. If you’re smarter, you’ll play golf smarter. Only golf
and you’ll be tired, it’ll be boring and you’ll get stupid,” she says, before
pointing out that this doesn’t mean her golfing ambitions are any less strong.
“The perfect plan is I want to go to college in the USA because I think the
education is better, and they give the players more space and they have school
teams. I really look forward to that. All the top players want to play the LPGA
and I’m the same.”
Lucy Shi Yuting
Born: 5th March, 1998 Japan
Lives: Shanghai
HSBC National Junior Ranking End of 2009
Number 3, Girls Group C (b1996-1998)
Winner Group C Girls, 2010 HSBC China Junior Open
HSBC National Junior Championship wins (9):
2009 – Girls Group C, Final, Shanghai; Girls Group C, Huangshan Leg; Girls Group
C, Taicang Leg.
2008 – Girls Group D, Final, Shanghai; Girls Group D, Zhengzhou Leg; Girls Group
D, Kunming Leg; Girls Group D, Beijing Leg; Girls Group D, Taicang Leg; Girls
Group D, Wenzhou Leg.
Shi Yuting introduces herself as Lucy these days. It’s a name, she explains in
tones so gentle it sounds like a lullaby, that her teacher helped her choose
last year. Just turned 12, she is one of the sweetest girls you could hope to
meet: slightly shy, yet charming. But don’t let the description fool you. Her
handshake betrays a vice-like grip, and her stunningly mature course management
has already won her 10 victories in the HSBC tournaments. This is a golfer, but
a happier golfer.
A switch from the Huangshan golf school in Anhui province, where Lucy and her
mother lived while her younger sister and dad stayed in Shanghai, to the David
Leadbetter Golf Academy at the Shanghai Silport course where she works with
Scottish coach Michael Dickie, has sparked the change. Instead of splitting her
days 50-50 between lessons and golf, she now stays in school all day, leaving an
hour earlier than her classmates to get back to her clubs. The family is back
together just outside Shanghai where Dad can join them every weekend.
“It was quite lonely when we weren’t all together. Now it’s much better because
we can all be together at least once a week,” she says.
Talk of pressure and mistakes, which jarred somewhat coming from her mouth when
she was just 10 years old, have disappeared and the smile is more readily
available. Now she talks in more positive terms about what she’s been working on
in her game, rather than what she did wrong on the course that day.
“I’ve improved some new skills and my distance is further than before. I’ve
fixed my grip a bit and my arms are straighter when I address the ball, and I’ve
learned to stop dropping my head when I hit the ball. My driver is 20 metres
longer. I’m really happy with that; it’s not just further, it’s straighter, too.
Before the ball didn’t go far and didn’t go very high, but now it’s better and
I’m very happy,” she explains.
Despite stepping up an age group in 2009, Yuting continued to win, claiming two
legs of the HSBC National Junior Championship and winning at the final in
November, before finishing the Year of the Ox with her first triumph at the HSBC
China Junior Open at the end of January.
“Everyone can win a championship, but how much you practice and how hard you
work is what decides how many tournaments you can win. I think I love golf more
(than the other girls),” she adds, to explain her dominance.
“Golf is the loveliest sport for me, but I’m also learning snooker and table
tennis. My dream is to be a member of the national team at the 2016 Olympics.
I’ll be 18 then. I’d like to win the gold medal if I can. I want more people and
more children to love to play golf. If I can win the Olympics, I will let the
whole world know how fantastic golf in China is. I want people to be proud of
Chinese golf and to introduce Chinese golf to everybody.”
Liu Yu
Born: 15th November 1995, Beijing
Lives: Beijing
HSBC National Junior Ranking End of 2009
Number 4, Girls Group B (b1994-1996)
Winner 2009 CITIC China Amateur Tour, Final, Shenzhen
Winner 2009 CITIC China Amateur Tour, Dalian Leg
Winner 2009 Zhang Lianwei Cup, Shenzhen
HSBC National Junior Championship wins (4):
2009 – Girls Group B, Final, Shanghai; Girls Group B, Beijing Leg.
2008 – Girls Group C, Final, Shanghai, Girls Group C, Taicang Leg.
If there’s anyone out there who still labours under stereotypical misconception
that all Chinese females hide their emotions behind a mask, they should meet Liu
Yu. Encountering her bold and direct demeanor, a westerner might say she wears
her heart on her sleeve. To the Chinese, she might be called a “typical” Beijing
girl. Either way, ask her a question – for instance how she felt about golf when
she first tried it at the age of eight – and you’ll quickly know exactly what
she thinks.
“My father took me to the golf course. It was OK. It was so-so, but I thought it
was boring. But, my father forced me!” she exclaims.
Asked later whether her relationship with her sport has developed into a love
affair, she’s equally frank.
“I’m not really, really in love with golf, but I do like it.”
Although she’d won twice in the 11-12 age group in 2008, it was only last year
that Liu admits she started to feel she was a good golfer. It began when she
shot her lowest ever score, a 65, en route to winning the Zhang Lianwei Cup in
Shenzhen. By the end of the year she’d won twice on the amateur tour, including
the final back in the same city, and twice in the HSBC National Junior
Championships.
“I didn’t like Shenzhen until last year. Before, I’d shot 54 for nine holes!”
she interjects, not for the first time, as she cheerfully corrects translation,
clarifies and adds to her explanations.
“I’m more confident. There was a step to the results. I’d practiced more and the
results improved. But it’s not always positive, good. There are times I don’t
play well and still feel upset… not a lot… just a little.”
Her future plans are also described with the same honesty, confidence and no
small measure of determination.
“It depends on how talented I am. I would like to go to University in the US; a
good school. If I can play golf well, maybe I can get into a top American
college, not just a golf school. I’m still concerned with how much talent I have
for golf. If I can be a professional, I only want to play LPGA, nothing else. If
I can, I want to go to the top.”
Zhang Jin
Born: 5th October 1995, Anhui
Lives: Beijing
HSBC National Junior Ranking End of 2009
Number 1, Boys Group B (b 1994-1996)
Winner Boys Group B, 2009 HSBC China Junior Open
Winner 2009 CITIC China Amateur Tour, Beijing Leg
HSBC National Junior Championship wins (6):
2009 – Boys Group B, Final, Shanghai; Boys Group B, Zhuhai Leg; Boys Group B,
Huangshan Leg; Boys Group B, Kunming Leg.
2008 – Boys Group C, Guangzhou Leg; Boys Group C, Beijing Leg.
There’s a great significance about 14-year-old Zhang Jin working his way towards
a career in golf, but before it can begin he starts to gleefully reel off a
list: “Dumb Dumb! Super Dumb! George of the Jungle!”
It’s the things his current coach, American Billy Martin, calls him as he tries
to teach what is, in his opinion, the single most important lesson for a junior
golfer: how to think.
It might seem that Martin, who coincidentally also coaches Apple Yang, is riding
Jin hard, but his protégé is getting the message and enjoying the light-hearted
abuse at the same time.
“It’s very fun. He always says a lot of funny things,” says Jin, insisting on
testing out his English.
“When I was young, if I played bad I would be very angry. Now it’s better. He’s
just funny, so I don’t get as angry.”
Now that that’s out of the way, we can get to the point: Jin stands poised to be
one of the first of a unique generation, among the first golf pros to follow
their fathers into the sport. Jin’s Dad, Zhang Daoquan, is Martin’s colleague at
Qinghe Bay Golf Club in Beijing, and first introduced his six-year-old son to
the sport by taking him to the course where he was working in Hainan.
Eight years later and Martin, who spent four years as Jack Nicklaus’s private
caddie before spending ten years in Asia running different aspects of the Golden
Bear’s academies in the Far East, sees one of those intangibles in Jin that
leads him to believe his potential is almost unlimited.
“He’s got the eyes. He’s got the eyes for competing. I coached a kid in Korea,
Sang Moon-Bae, the number one money winner (on the 2009 Korean PGA): they have
the same eyes and the same thinking,” Martin insists.
“Caddying with Jack I got to meet a lot of great people. It’s the same eyes I
saw in Michael Jordan, in Gene Hackman, in Bill Clinton; the same eyes and the
same focus. He’s got that.”
Jin showed some of that potential in 2009 winning his age group at four
consecutive HSBC National Junior Championship events, including the final, and,
at the tender age of 13, beat the adults at the Beijing stop on the national
amateur tour. His dreams, however, go far higher.
“Now the best Chinese player is number 81 in the world. I want to be even better,
maybe even the top ten. I want to play the big tournaments. I want to win a
Major and the HSBC Champions. I want to win that in Shanghai!”
Zhou Tian
Born: 17th September 1992, Zhejiang
Lives: Beijing
HSBC National Junior Ranking (End of 2009):
Number 13, Boys Group A (b 1991-1994)
HSBC National Junior Championship wins (1):
2009 – Boys Group A, Final, Shanghai.
The oldest of the children we’ve singled out, Zhou Tian is a late developer, who
only really started working on his golf game in May 2007. He may also be the
most complex of the characters, too.
“I’m a little bit shy and sometimes too easy to be nervous; very easy to be
nervous. Sometimes, if I fall into a very bad feeling I won’t play good golf.
Feelings influence me a lot. I’m a person who is easily influenced by feelings.
I’m…”
He searches for the right word in English; sensitive?
“Yes! I’m sensitive,” he says.
“I think a lot. Sometimes it’s my disadvantage. I spend a long time looking at
the curve on the green. I look too much.”
The depth of Zhou Tian’s thinking may also be his strength. The persistence he
showed to keep working despite shooting close to 100 when he first competed in
the HSBC National Junior Championship in 2007, and which led to him winning the
senior age group at the 2009 final, is evident in other little traits.
It’s not just that he insists on speaking English, it’s the way that, uncommonly,
he asks for questions he doesn’t understand to be repeated and, if that doesn’t
work, seeks clarification. It also shows when he analyzes why he has become such
a swing junkie while training at the SGA Golf Coaching Center with Australian/British
pro Andrew Gutteridge. That fascination has helped him develop one of the most
beautiful, smoothest strokes you could hope to see, but, by his own admission,
he has neglected his short game.
“Golf development in China is not natural. The first contact with golf is the
swing, so we just practice the swing. Many adults are on the range swinging,
like my father: he never goes to the green to practice,” he states.
“Asian people always like the feeling of power. People don’t understand the
short game is the most important thing. I’ve already changed my opinion. I think
the short game is very, very important and in the future I will practice a lot.”
And while he may admit to being too sensitive at times, he doesn’t lack for
self-belief and determination
“I think I have talent for sports. I’ve done a lot of sports – badminton, table
tennis, basketball – and I think I have talent,” he states.
“For golf, my dream is to be a very good player. I think I can do it in the
future, through practice. I think I can do it. A player, at least, I can play
the PGA Tour at least and play the Majors – the US Open – the best thing is if I
can win a Major. That’s what a good player does. If golf is not OK, I like
psychology. Maybe I’ll study this subject in college.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The HSBC China Junior Golf Program
Introduced in 2007 the HSBC China Junior Golf Program was devised to help the
China Golf Association develop a solid, sustainable yet expandable long-term
framework around which they could evolve the process of developing and
increasing the number of young golfers in China and to nurture the most talented
of those children.
The only officially-sanctioned junior golf programme in China, it comprises:
The HSBC National Junior Championship: a series of seven tournaments
played in five age groups ranging from six years old to seventeen. One of the
critical elements is that the course set-up and course conditions are kept as
consistent as possible to enable the progress of children from all over China to
be monitored and assessed.
The 2010 schedule will include one tournament each month from March to July,
with a sixth event in September and the finals in their traditional slot the
week before the WGC-HSBC Champions.
China National Junior Team: Formed in March 2009 to create more
opportunities for China’s elite young players to gain international exposure and
international experience. This year the team is planning a trip to compete in
the Junior Open Championship in Scotland before then watching one of the great
events in world golf, the Open at the sport’s home St Andrews.
The HSBC China Junior Open: the pinnacle of junior golf in China, played
annually just before the start of the Chinese New Year Holiday. The 2010 event
included teams from Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Chinese Taipei.
The HSBC National Golf Ranking System: Launched in March 2008, the system
covers not only HSBC National Junior Championship events, but also other junior
events sanctioned by the CGA. It is designed to help with the process of
identifying young talent and to aid the tracking the progress of China’s most
talented children.
The HSBC Summer and Winter Camps: Held in cities all over China as far
apart as Shenzhen, Nanshan, Kunming, Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai, the camps
cater for a variety of standards and ages, but are all aimed at sharing the joy
and frustrations of this unique sport.
The HSBC Schools Golf Training Project: Designed to drive the teaching of
the fundamentals of the sport into Physical Education (PE) classes in schools,
the project has expanded from 30 schools in 2008 and will involve around 100
establishments in 2010. This project has already introduced and instilled a love
of golf to more than 20,000 kids.
Tilbake
til første side
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her finner du
DEBATTSIDEN
Her diskuterer du golf
Si din mening!!
|
|
|
|
Golfsiden.com - Norges største uavhengige nettsted for golf -
Norges store golfportal
Les mer
