Italy's Quiet Golf Champion – Francesco Molinari

A year ago Francesco Molinari put the seal on a remarkable twelve months with one of the most sensational tournament displays ever seen in Asian golf, when he and Lee Westwood finished streets ahead of a world-class field at the WGC-HSBC Champions. Tim Maitland reports.

When Francesco “Chicco” Molinari briefly raised his hands in the air and gazed momentarily up the cheering Shanghai crowds in the grandstand at Sheshan last year, you would have had little clue from his body language that he had just gone eyeball to eyeball with the hottest player on the planet and won. 

Even now, when he looks back at the best performance, the biggest victory, the most spectacular year of his career and a season unparalleled in the history of Italian golf, his voice – a deep baritone – rumbles along at exactly the same steady, careful, unflustered pace. 

"It was very, very good. It was probably the best golf I’ve played so. When you’re playing against the number one in the world it doesn’t get any tougher than that, especially the way he was playing. It was just a great week for my confidence and my self-belief to see that I could compete against the best in the world," the 28-year-old explains, his tone showing no hint of the kind of excitement of someone describing the day and the week where he delivered a performance that he had strived for most of his life.

There’s no hint of exhilaration when he considers the culmination of a remarkable twelve months in his life. It started when he won the Omega Mission Hills World Cup for Italy with his older brother Edoardo in Shenzhen and continued when he twice played alongside Edoardo as his brother won his first European Tour events in Scotland. If that wasn’t enough the brothers, who were born a little under two years apart, paired up again to help Europe win the Ryder Cup and, circling the globe, Francesco returned to China to claim the biggest prize of his career taking his season earnings to within a few Euros of 2.8 million.

 The vanquished in this case is far more effusive than the victor.

“Last year’s event was great! Myself and Francesco ran away from the field! We played a different golf course that week!” exclaims Westwood, who was starting his first of what would be 22 weeks at number one.

“It was pretty much flawless golf,” Molinari muses modestly.

As the quiet champion, Molinari is perhaps destined to be filed in the same place that the 2006 Shanghai winner Yang Yong-Eun occupied until he became Asia’s first male Major Champion and his 2009 PGA Championship cast his previous achievements into a new light. Both are symbolic of the arrival of relatively new golfing nations to the sport’s top table and, at the times of their win, neither golfer had the same superstar status as some of the other names on the HSBC Champions roll of honour like Phil Mickelson (2007 & 2009) or Sergio Garcia (2008).

They have one other thing in common: to win both produced a performance so perfect that they remain a regular reference point.

“I try to revive the feeling I had that week. I played with such poise. It was my perfect tournament,” Yang said the week before he enshrined himself as a legend of Asian golf.

Molinari’s emotions are he’s exactly the same.

“Definitely! What is left for me from that week are the feelings that I had on the golf course; being competitive, being really in the moment and just the attitude I had on the golf course, rather than the game itself,” he says.

It’s hard enough to believe Francesco would need such a reference point, so unchanging is his demeanour: even people close to his family say that while brother Edoardo rides a more typically Italian emotional rollercoaster, Francesco never deviates.

What’s almost impossible to believe is his claim that, as a child, learning the game in Turin, his dentist-father frequently banned him for ‘throwing the toys out of the pram’.

“I used to throw clubs as a kid and swear and if my Dad saw me from other holes throwing clubs he wouldn’t let me play for a couple of weeks. That was the punishment for not behaving on the golf course,” Francesco explains.

“I think I was lucky to learn the lesson as a kid. When you turn professional you try really hard think about what you’re doing and not about what happened or what is going to happen. I think that’s what I did really well in Shanghai.”

Patience has proved a virtue in other ways too. At the insistence of their parents, both Edoardo and Francesco had to complete degrees at the University of Torino (Edoardo studying Engineering and Francesco choosing Business) before starting their golf careers.

Although the younger Molinari initially singles out improving year-on-year rather than his victories, there have been plenty of highlights in his professional life.

“The World Cup and the Ryder Cup were two of the biggest moments in my career. The win in Shenzhen was great, playing against Rory (McIlroy) and G-Mac (Graeme McDowell) in the last round and winning by one shot at the 18^th is always something special. Being the first World Cup success for Italy alongside my brother Edoardo was just something really unbelievable.

“The Ryder Cup is an unbelievable experience; different from any other emotion you can feel on the golf course. The first morning we were not even playing and when we went to the tee they started chanting “There’s only two Molinaris” and it was just a lot of fun. I thought it was one of the best chants of the week. It’s a lot of tension and a lot of pressure but at the same time it’s also a lot of fun because you don’t play for money, you don’t play for world ranking points… you just play for winning and the team.”

As for the steady improvement, Molinari admits that the law of diminishing returns applies as you get into the jet set of tour society. This year he has strived for a little more distance and in the process lost some of the pinpoint accuracy.

That’s not the only change. This year Molinari has played fewer events to make room for the Majors and other WGC tournaments that his HSBC Champions win has allowed him to add to the cream of the European Tour’s events.  The results haven’t been bad – top 10s in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, Volvo World Match Play Championship and the BMW Italian Open and, the highlight, a third place finish at the WGC-Cadillac Championship – but they haven’t been as consistent as previous seasons.

The other big adjustment has been the arrival of his first child, a son Tommaso, born this year on February 5^th.

“Life changes after a baby. You have to adapt to the new condition of being a parent, but it’s fun. As soon as he smiles you forget about anything that happened – good or bad – on the golf course. It gives you a different perspective,” Molinari reveals.

So, Molinari returns to the HSBC Champions not quite on the crest of the wave that swept him to the biggest win of his career, but looking forward to defending his title on what he describes as “a phenomenal” 18 holes of golf.

“It’s going to be different! We won the World Cup in China and now I’ve won in Shanghai; obviously I really like playing in China! It’s going to be fun to be back there another year. The HSBC Champions was just the climax of a fantastic year for me. I’m really looking forward to going back there this year and try and do the same,” he says.

How he’ll be received will be interesting. Perhaps like “YE” Yang Yong-Eun it will only be a Major championship that will make a nation relatively new to the sport re-evaluate the near-perfection he displayed last year.

If Francesco Molinari doesn’t get the recognition from the golfing public, the player he vanquished believes the Italian certainly has got it from his peers; the people that matter most.

“I think he did by all the players. That’s who you want recognition from,” Westwood says.

“He played very nicely,” the Englishman adds.

It’s a comment that sums up Francesco Molinari perfectly; simply because it is so understated.

Francesco Molinari Profile:

Personal

Nationality: Italian

Born: 8^th November 1982, Turin (Torino) Italy

Height/Weight: 5ft 8in/11st 5lb (172cm/72kg)

Family: Wife Valentina (m. 2007). Son Tommaso (b. 2010)

Lives: London, England

Education: Degree in Business, University of Torino (Università degli Studi di Torino/UNITO)

Other interests: Snowboarding, Football (Supports Inter Milan and West Ham United)

Career

Professional wins:

2010 WGC-HSBC Champions, Sheshan International Golf Club, Shanghai China

2010 Ryder Cup, Celtic Manor Resort, Newport, Wales

2009 Omega Mission Hills World Cup, Mission Hills, Guangdong, China (with Edoardo Molinari)

2006 Telecom Italian Open, Castello di Tolcinasco G & CC, Milan, Italy

Other Professional Landmarks:

November 2010: career-best 5^th place in the European Tour’s “race to Dubai” order of merit

October 2009: reached top 50 of the Official Golf World Rankings for the first time

2004: Turned pro after earning his European Tour card at his first attempt at Q School

Amateur wins:

2004 Italian Amateur Stroke Play Championship; Italian Match Play Championship; Sherry Cup, Spain

2002 Italian Amateur Stroke Play Championship; Italian Amateur Foursomes Championship (with Edoardo Molinari)

2010 HSBC Champions victory:

Became the first wire-to-wire winner in the history of the HSBC Champions

His first European Tour victory since the 2006 Italian Open – a gap of four years and 185 days and 125 European Tour events between victories

His first WGC victory of his career, in his fifth WGC appearance

Moved into the top 15 of the Official World Golf Ranking; his highest career position

Marked the first time since the WGC events started in 1999 that European Tour members had won three events in the same year (Ian Poulter (WGC – Accenture Match Play), Ernie Els (WGC – CA Championship)

Became the 17th different winner of a WGC event, while Italy became the ninth different country to win a WGC event

The Molinaris joined Seve and Manuel Ballesteros, who in 1983 both won, as the only brothers to win in the same European Tour season. (1983 Seve – PGA Championship, Irish Open and Trophée Lancôme; Manuel – Timex Open. 2010 Francesco – WGC-HSBC Champions; Edoardo – Barclays Scottish Open and Johnnie Walker Championship)

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Mickelson, Montgomerie, Scott awed by China's future Golf Champions

2010 Valero Texas Open winner Adam Scott had been beaten by a girl before, just not by a 12-year-old. Playing the 17^th hole of the WGC-HSBC Champions Pro-Am, Scott found the bunker and made bogey. Little Lucy Shi Yuting, a thireteen-time winner in three years on the HSBC National Junior Championship, made par.

The significance is twofold, says the writer of this article, Tim Maitland.

 

The other girl to beat Scott was a few years ago and someone called Wie – Michelle Wie – and you can make a note that November 3^rd 2010 was the day when the elite of men’s golf truly came to realise that China is coming faster than they realized.

“These are the Olympic champions and world champions of the future. They’re fantastic! Fantastic!” raved Europe’s Ryder Cup-winning captain Colin Montgomerie after conducting a clinic with some of the younger children from the HSBC China Junior Golf Program.

“They’re proper golfers. They’re not just kids that can hit a golf ball on the range. These are complete golfers at nine years old: driver, putting, and short game!” Monty continued.

“I think in the next 10 years you’ll see a tremendous growth into competitive golf; I’m talking about into the world’s top 100. That’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. We have to accept that. The competition is coming from this part of the world: Korea, China especially. Golf is booming!”

As Monty was saying those words, Mickelson was coming off the course having also encountered Lucy Shi at the 17th, three days after she beat her rivals by 12 shots over three rounds at the HSBC National Junior Championship final.

“She hit a 6‑iron to about 15 feet from the hole, lipped out the putt and made par. She was an incredible player!” said Lefty.

“You could tell right away that she's got a lot of potential to be a great golfer.  She has a wonderful swing, a great short game, great putting stroke.  And at only 12, it's amazing how talented she is at such a young age.  I hope that she continues to develop and continues to play well and improve and become a force on the LPGA.”

Back on the range, Monty was echoing the words of PGA Tour player Jason Dufner who, a year earlier, having done the same clinic exclaimed the Chinese kids he saw were far superior to their equivalent age group in the States.

“Oh of course they are! Way ahead! And of course the work ethic here is different. These kids are prepared to put in the hours it takes nowadays to become very, very good. You can see how they love it. They’re all involved. It’s fantastic and the work ethic here is different to ours,” Monty said, adding that the focus of the kids he saw put him to shame.

“I was a lazy player myself; two or three hours and I was getting a little bit bored. These kids? Six, seven hours a day and just golf! Then they’re studying as well. This is where the future is. Now golf has become an Olympic sport, in this country it can only add to the opportunities given to them and the incentives given to them. They’re well ahead of our youngsters. If it’s a numbers game China wins every time hands down. I’ve had a successful career I suppose and I started at six and I couldn’t even get the ball airborne when I was ten, never mind hit the ball like this. These are golfers!”

Montgomerie’s comments came as the junior championship was celebrating the one thousandth child to compete in the elite tier of tournaments that have been running since 2007.

“A thousand children may not sound like a lot over the four years that we have been investing in the China Golf Association’s programme, but that’s the top of the pyramid,” said Giles Morgan, HSBC Group Head of Sponsorship.

“Below the top of that pyramid, we have had 8,000 children who have come through our summer and winter camps, learning the great game of golf, and below that, at the foundation of the pyramid, we have had 200,000 children touching golf for the first time in their schools’ PE lessons through the HSBC Education Program,” Morgan added.

Thanks to Tim Maitland for his fascinating insight into China's growing golf program.

 

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China Golf "Firsts"

China’s Golf "Firsts"

Golf in China is making it's move: read below to see China's golf history and timeline.

 

1984 - First modern golf course: Chung Shan Hot Spring, opens in Zhongshan, Guangdong province

1985 - May 24th. First governing body: the China Golf Association is established 

1986 - January. First “international” tournament: Chung Shan hosts the Chung Shan Cup, featuring foreign players but not recognised by any outside sanctioning bodies the Pro-Am event is hailed in China the first international tournament. 

1990 - September/October. First big event: The Asian Games golf tournament is held at Beijing Golf Club, Shunyi District. The Asian Games itself was the first large-scale international sports event to be held in the People’s Republic of China.

1994 - October. First medals: At the Asian Games in Hiroshima Zhang Lianwei wins an individual silver medal behind Kaname Yokoo, while China’s women’s team claims bronze.

1994 - April. First professionals: Zheng Wengen and John Xiao Chenghan are among a handful of golfers to become the first Chinese professionals when they pass a newly-introduced CGA exam.

1995 - First domestic tour: The Volvo China Tour, China’s first domestic circuit, consisted of four 36-hole tournaments.

1995 - April. First official international pro tournament: The Volvo China Open in Beijing (Beijing International Golf Club) is won by Raul Fretes of Paraguay. Total prize money was US$400,000.

1997 - April. First Chinese player to win an international tournament: Cheng Jun is victorious at the Volvo China Open in Beijing. 

2001 - November. First visit by a world number one: Tiger Woods makes his first trip to China, an exhibition at Mission Hills near Shenzhen in Guangdon

2003 - January. First Chinese win in a European Tour event: Zhang Lianwei wins the co-sanctioned Caltex Masters in Singapore.

2004 - First Chinese player in a Major championship: Zhang Lianwei receives an invitation to the Masters. 

2004 - May. First Chinese golf world record: Mission Hills entered into Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest golf club after its expansion to 180 holes.

2005 - November. First time to host Asia’s leading tournament: With US$5m prize money, the HSBC Champions, then Asia’s richest tournament, debuts in Shanghai. The inaugural tournament is won by English Ryder Cup star David Howell.

 

2007 - First fully-integrated junior development scheme: The HSBC China Junior Golf Program and HSBC National Junior Championships are launched. 

2007 - First Chinese to win Asian Tour’s Order of Merit: Liang Wenchong clinches the title with nine top-ten finishes including a win at the Singapore Masters.

2007 - First Chinese to join American college circuit: Han Ren enrolls on a golf scholarship at Indiana University

2008 - July. First weekend play in a Major: Liang Wenchong makes the cut at the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.

2008 - November. First impact on the Official World Rankings: Sergio Garcia moves up to number two after winning the HSBC Champions. It’s the first time an Asian event has had such a profound effect on the global standings.

2009 - April. First Women’s Tour: The China Golf Association announces the birth of the China LPGA Tour. The circuit will have strong links with the Orient Golf chain, playing the majority of the events on their courses.

2009 - Asia’s first WGC event: WGC status is awarded to the HSBC Champions in April, making it indisputably Asia’s single-most important tournament. The event in November features Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson playing in the same tournament for the first time in Asia. Paired together in the leading group on the final day, Mickelson triumphs.

2010 - First Impact On World Number One: Four players - Lee Westwood, Tiger Woods, Martin Kaymer and Phil Mickelson – arrived in Shanghai for the 2010 WGC-HSBC Champions, knowing a good week would make the number one in the world. No Asian tournament had ever impacted the very top of the Official World Golf Ranking.

20??: China’s first world number one:??

Courtesy of Tim Maitland

Golf: Is China Coming?

Addressing China’s emergence into world of golf is not a question of “if”, it’s a question of “how fast?” Tim Maitland reports.

There are few definitive truths one can utter about a nation of China’s massive scale. There are, however, some useful generalizations about the “Middle Kingdom” especially in the last ten or twenty years. Firstly, it tends to develop in whatever it is doing far quicker than almost all outside predications. Secondly, China, just as it did with its “socialist market economy”, tends to find its own way. The same broad brush strokes apply for golf.

Just as surpassing Japan’s gross domestic product in the second quarter of 2010 confirmed China’s status as an economic power, China’s position as a global tournament host has also been confirmed. It took just one edition of the HSBC Champions as a World Golf Championships event to complete a process started by the Volvo China Open, the first truly international Chinese professional event in 1995, to convince most of the naysayers that Shanghai was going to work. One of the little asterisks – whether it should count as an official PGA Tour win - was quickly removed, and this year it did… for the tour’s existing members at least.

That it happened faster than anyone imagined is beyond issue. As world number one golfer Lee Westwood exclaimed recently: “It’s achieved a high-profile status very quickly, amazingly quickly when you look at other tournaments and how much history they have before they achieve that kind of fame.”

Westwood also neatly plucked out three factors that indicate that Shanghai’s growing importance on the global golf calendar – this is after all the event that Tiger Woods describes as “the crowning jewel of all of Asian golf” – is unlikely to do anything but continue its upward trend:

“The Chinese economy is probably the strongest economy in the world right now, it’s a good tournament...and it’s a great golf course; that’s really all you can ask for,” Westwood said.

The point seems to have been taken on board across the board in America, where the credit crunch closed courses and the stagnation in terms of the numbers of golfers is increasingly being seen as a decline. Couple that with the fact that a very American golfer like Nick Watney currently sports the logos of Japanese luxury carmaker Lexus and German fashion brand Hugo Boss and you’re dealing with a very different, worldly generation of American players.

“The markets here and in Europe aren’t growing and are maybe even shrinking. I kind of figured that the way that China was going economically and technologically I thought that golf would follow, but it seemed to happen very quickly,” said Watney, sounding convincingly like a CEO himself.

“A World Golf [Championships event] in China, I think, is great for the game," continued Watney. "Obviously, Asia is booming right now so we need to follow that. When the best players continue to show up that validates that it is a real event. When they win it shows that they are taking it seriously and it’s a good golf course if the top names do well.”

A roll of honour that working backwards from 2009 goes Mickelson-Garcia-Mickelson-Yang would seem to illustrate Watney’s point rather well.

The addition of the PGA Tour’s first foray into South East Asia (the limited field CIMB Asia Pacific Classic took place at The Mines Resort in Malaysia the week before Shanghai) is further indication that China’s place on the world-class calendar is beyond reproach. It also signals that the battle for position either side of the first week of November is truly on with the Barclays Singapore Open competing with the JB Were (Australian) Masters as the quality of field across the region skyrockets.

“To go over there for one week is kinda silly, so I don’t see why guys won’t go over there and play more,” Watney explains. “There’ll be more than one or two events. You have a huge market over there and if it’s growing and wants golf you’d be a fool to not do it. I think it will only grow.”

That the number of golf courses in China will continue to grow as well is also beyond doubt. Despite a  long-standing moratorium at central government level making permission for new layouts harder to get, China has found a Chinese solution and, loathe as one is to make broad sweeping statements, many of the world’s top golf course designers are there and they’re not there on holiday.

The question now is how? To understand the way golf is evolving in China it helps to think of golf as a feature, like an elaborate marble fountain; a centerpiece to a real estate lifestyle business. That will only continue; Imperial Springs near Guangzhou, which is close to completion, will make all the palatial developments that have preceded it look, in comparison, for want of a better word… a bit Caddyshack.

Among the more promising developments for those of us who can’t let go of our western concepts of “sport” being something more in a Corinthian way, isn’t the massive new Mission Hills project on Hainan Island, although that points the way to where the world’s next big tourist magnet will be, but the low-grade locally-designed tracks that form a part of the equally enormous but little-known Nanshan International Golf Club in Shandong province. It is also worth remembering that virtually all of the members clubs allow daily-fee golf and that as China’s middle class grows wealthier the sport is going to become more affordable to them.

However, arguing that golf in China needs to trickle down the societal layers to reach the masses before we can address the next question – where China’s stars are going to come from – is made redundant by Korea’s example.

The Land of the Morning Calm has produced if not one of the greatest generations, certainly the single greatest year group of women golfers the world has ever seen without them ever seeing golf courses regularly. Shin Ji-Yai, Kim In-Kyung, Choi Na-Yeon – the so-called “Dragon Ladies” –   honed their games on the top tier of Korea’s multi-story urban driving ranges not on the drastically expensive, tee-off-at-5 a.m.-oversubscribed golf courses.

As well as proving that access to courses isn’t critical, Korea also provides possibly the greatest wisdom when it comes to answering where the future China’s Tiger Woods, Mickelson, Wie or Miyazato is going to emerge from. For the sake of finding a fancy name for it, we could call it the “Shin-Park paradigm” after two of Korea’s most recent women’s Major winners, Shin Ji-Yai and Park In-Bee. Ji-Yai grew up as a golfer in Korea, winning on the KLPGA as a high-school student in 2005. In-Bee went to the States at the age of twelve to do her growing there.

The answer to the Shin-Park puzzle in China is probably both. The clues, when it comes to looking into the future, ironically, won’t be found during the week of the WGC-HSBC Champions but the week before. That’s when the year-long HSBC National Junior Championship had its own version of the Champions – a winners-only finale at the Sino-Bay Country Sports Club located in the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park outside Shanghai.

In its fourth year, the HSBC National Junior Championship passed a notable landmark; the entry list at Sino-Bay took the number of children to have benefited from an early taste of tournament golf past one thousand! The HSBC China Junior Golf Program has now introduced over eight thousand children to the sport through its summer and winter camps and 200,000 children have swung a club for the first time through the schools scheme which introduces golf into the PE curriculum at primary and middle schools.

 Credit: Getty Images

If you’re asking yourself whether China’s fledgling golf industry – remembering that the first modern course only opened in 1984 – is mature enough to grow future champions yet, it’s worth heeding the reaction of PGA Tour pro Jason Dufner after he’d given a clinic for some of the younger juniors before last year’s WGC-HSBC Champions.

“The basics were unbelievable.  Some of them were a little limited because of their size but I think where their age range is it was pretty incredible for what they were doing, from what I’ve seen,” Dufner said, comparing the 10-12-year-old kids he saw favourably with their American counterparts.

“I think they’re way ahead from what I’ve seen," Duffner related. " I think in ten years time there might be a lot of Chinese golfers on the PGA and LPGA Tours.  I think some of the better players that I saw would hold their own if they went to the US… they would be very, very competitive against their age bracket for sure.”

A more cautionary note was sounded recently by Asian Tour Executive Chairman Kyi Hla Han who questioned whether the tournament structure was in place to grow China’s male professionals. Han might have a point, but reports of his comments also failed to acknowledge the existence of the China PGA Tour as a successor to the Omega China Tour, which is far less visible than its predecessor outside of the Chinese language and, at the time of writing, the number of professional men’s tournaments in China in 2010 looked likely to match those of the previous two seasons.

The probability is that the women will come before the men, or, remembering how Jenny Feng Shanshan came from nowhere as a teenager to earn her LPGA card, the girls will come before the boys. The reality is, for every Matteo Manassero, Rory McIlroy and Ryo Ishikwawa, there are many more young female golfers who have proved competitive at an early age at the pinnacle of the women’s game. The domestic tour – the China LPGA – is in its second year and aims at staging ten tournaments annually: Zhang Na’s four wins on the Japan LPGA in 2007 have established an alternative roadmap to the American route.

It’s already been suggested that the girls’ work ethic exceeds that of the Chinese boys by one high-profile overseas coach. And while one makes generalizations with trepidation, perhaps also the Asian serenity, what long-time LPGA caddie Shaun Clews refers to as a “certain calmness” that the Korean stars benefit from, will also serve the Chinese girls too.

Whether it will be the regular winners on the HSBC National Junior Championship (girls like Apple Yang Jiaxin, Lu Yue or, of the younger ones, Lucy Shi Yuting and boys like Zhang Jin or Zhou Tian) or those following the Park In-Bee route (Cindy Feng Yueer and the unrelated Feng Simin are both prominent on the American junior circuit) or one of the young men going through the US Colleges (Hu Mu, Wang Minghao or Han Ren) that will arrive first, only time will tell.

Simin, originally from Beijing, is already an AJGA Rolex All-American while Yueer, from the city of Shenzhen in China’s golfing heartland Guangdong province, rates in the top on Golfweek’s junior ranking despite being a couple of years younger than her rivals, but then as a counterpoint Feng Shanshan was hardly on anyone’s radar outside Guangzhou when she went to the LPGA’s Q School. Lucy Shi, at the tender age of 12, looks like a carbon copy of Shin Ji-Yai when she was still a teenager, and although a lot can go wrong in the next six years, Shi looks more likely to star rather than just feature on the LPGA.

The reality is that all these players are going to get greater opportunities because of golf’s entry to the Olympics in 2016. Olympic status has moved the China Golf Association from a cul-de-sac (it was until a couple of years ago lumped in with and effectively financially supporting sports like cricket and snooker in the so-called “small ball” section) onto the six-lane superhighway of China’s sports ministry, The State General Administration of Sports.

Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, who might not claim to be a China “expert”, might have hit the nail on the head with his broad, sweeping statement about the future of Chinese golf.

“We’ve seen some strong players emerging. Once they put their mind to golf we’ll see more,” Stenson stated. “The focus now – because of the Olympics – it’s just going to keep on working away and it’s going to be interesting to follow these next ten years.”

So the answer when you ask whether China is coming is an emphatic "yes!" The question that remains is just where from, how many and how fast?

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What Tiger Woods considers The Crowning Jewel of All of Asian Golf

It took just one staging of the WGC-HSBC Champions to dispel all doubts as to whether a World Golf Championships event could succeed in Asia. Tim Maitland reports on how the Shanghai tournament has spearheaded another step up the ladder for tournament golf in Asia.

At some stage between the inception of the HSBC Champions in 2005 and Tiger Woods last year calling it “the crowning jewel of all of Asian golf", golf in Asia made a transition. Not that the autumn swing to the East was ever just a bit of fun - the big names that did travel certainly lived up to their billing – but now there is little question that Asia has taken its place at the top table of top-class tournament play.

The who, what, why, when, where of Asia’s coming of age? The “where?” is a no-brainer. The venue: the Nelson & Haworth design Sheshan International Golf Club. The “who?” or “what?” is just as easy: the HSBC Champions - whether through its winners-only fields, the champions it produces or the prize money it offers – has clearly spearheaded the transition. Quite when that moment occurred is slightly more difficult to pin down.

It would be simplistic to say that point came with the announcement in April 2009 that the World Golf Championships, the elite-level tournaments introduced in 1999 to create a clearer structure of top tournaments beneath the Majors, was including Shanghai in its schedule.

By then Padraig Harrington had already declared, as the holder of both the Open and PGA Championship titles, that it was his opinion that creating the HSBC Champions was “a turning point for Asian golf” and few would dispute that the actual tipping point was the inaugural year. Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest golfer ever seen to cross the Pacific, graced the new tournament whose US $5 million purse instantly placed it at the top of the Asian tree, and the fervor which his appearances in the first two years generated did much to fuel the growing appetite for golf in China.

The 2006 edition wouldn’t get too many votes even though the eventual winner Yang Yong-Eun, then relatively unknown outside his native Korea and Japan (where he had won four times in just over two years), had to fend off the challenges of Woods, that year’s Open Championship and PGA Championship winner, and 2004 US Open Champion Retief Goosen and his successor in 2005, Michael Campbell.

The 2007 HSBC Champions was a watershed, not just because it tempted Phil Mickelson – then one of world golf’s least-travelled superstars – to cross oceans, but because it resulted in the world number two’s first overseas victory worthy of the name (the other, at EuroDisney near Paris in 1993 was a European satellite tour event).

Those who would argue that world-class status comes when winning a tournament get on Tiger’s radar, might suggest that Phil pointing out the pleasure he got from having his name etched in the silverware before the letters W-o-o-d-s were scratched on it, instantly confirmed the HSBC Champions place in the world order: always looking for the slightest slight to put right, Tiger would never let such a self-motivating opportunity pass unnoticed.

By 2008 it was beyond all doubt. The winner, Sergio Garcia, overtook Mickelson as the world number two. Never before had an Asian event had that sort of impact on the Official World Golf Ranking. There was no doubt that world-class golf had finally arrived.

“You can write it into the history books!” declared 2008 Masters Champion Trevor Immelman at the time.

Once the event became the only WGC tournament, and thus by definition the most important tournament in the world, not to have been claimed by Woods. The blip on the radar screen grew even larger. 

To the world’s local bank, arguing the semantics of exactly when they spearheaded the arrival of truly world-class golf is deemed irrelevant, as long as everyone is agreeing that it has.

“The goal was to refocus our global tournaments in Asia and create Asia’s first truly-world class golf tournament, and I don’t think anyone would argue that we have achieved that,” explains Giles Morgan, HSBC Group Head of Sponsorship.

“What’s even more pleasing is that in achieving our goal we’ve been able to showcase the strengths of our business and there aren’t many companies who are able to achieve that through their sports sponsorships. We didn’t gamble to bring the HSBC Champions to Shanghai. We assessed the appetite in the relevant markets very carefully. We asked and answered key questions: Is Asia ready for world-class golf? Are our customers and potential clients among those yearning for an event of that stature? Are the world’s top golfers ready to travel that far on a consistent basis? Are the other key elements in place or achievable to guarantee a successful engagement? The answers back then were ‘Yes’ and here we are, six years later, proved right.”

Just how quickly the American media embraced that sentiment is further proof. Until last year, the WGC events had only once before ventured outside the sport’s traditional American and European heartlands (the 2001 Accenture Match Play Championship in Australia). One golf writer described the initial response to the announcement of WGC status for the Shanghai event – debating an asterisk based around the fact that the HSBC Champions prize money won’t count to the PGA Tour order of merit, while failing to notice that its slot in November after the FedEx Cup makes the money list virtually irrelevant to any player successful enough to qualify for the event – as “myopic”. It took just one edition of the HSBC Champions as a WGC event for the same writers to start campaigning for some of the so-called asterisks to be removed. The PGA Tour reacted quickly, making victory in Shanghai count as an official win for its members.

Naturally tournament organisers expected it to take a little time before all of the American golfers – famously described by Australia’s Stuart Appleby as “like a bag of prawns on a hot Sunday” because “they don’t travel well” – to fully embrace the travel involved for the fourth WGC event of the year. The reality is that the quality of the field – including Tiger’s commitment to play his fourth HSBC Champions this year – will mean that so many ranking points are available that any golfer who cares about his place in the world order has quickly recognised that he needs to be in Shanghai.

Ironically, the global downturn has helped accelerate cementing the WGC-HSBC Champions status. With economies of the US and Europe slowing or in recession, the global golf brands, whether they’re the golfers themselves or the sponsors who leverage their products off them, all need the newer markets to keep improving their bottom line.

PGA commissioner Tim Finchem certainly had few doubts when he declared that elevating the HSBC Champions into the WGC stable was: “One of the most significant steps ever taken in the globalization of golf, and one of the most logical.”  

“World-class golf has arrived on this continent and the map of the golf world may never look the same,” he added… and, with the 2010 WGC-HSBC Champions on course to match the 2009 event’s status in having the second best field of the year outside the United States (beaten only, and naturally, by the (British) Open Championship) he’s almost certainly right.

Sidebars:

2009 Champion: Phil Mickelson (USA)

All eyes, including record crowds that created the feel of a Major as queues snaked for hundreds of yards outside the course, were on Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods who were paired together in the final group for the final round.

However a near-immaculate round from “The Big Easy” Ernie Els led to a very different finish. The whole tournament hinged on just a few moments of utter drama as the big South African, who would sign for a course record nine-under-par 63, dumped his approach to 18 in the water just as Mickelson holed “the best putt I made all week” to save par at the spectacular 16^th hole.

The American held on to win by a single shot. The next day the producer of the live TV coverage shook his tired head saying “this event has packed 15 years of history into five”.

“I thought that this was a very successful first run as a World Golf Championships event. I think it has momentum to continue to move up in status and importance over the next four or five years, and I'm curious to see where it ends up,” Phil Mickelson.

2008 Champion: Sergio Garcia (ESP)

The 2008 HSBC Champions produced another historical moment for golf in Asia when Sergio Garcia won at Sheshan to become the new world number two. Never before had an Asian tournament had such a significant impact on the world ranking.

Garcia’s win came from yet another dramatic play-off on the 18^th hole, which he’d birdied in regulation to force extra holes with fellow European Ryder Cup member Oliver Wilson of England. Wilson, searching for the win that would back-up his reputation as one of the more rapidly improving players in world golf, shaved the hole with a birdie putt on the second play-off hole leaving the door open for Garcia who holed out from around 12 feet to clinch victory.        

“You have to come and show yourself here. You can’t just play in the US and Continental Europe. Asia is definitely a global player. The HSBC Champions is a great tournament. They’ve been raising the bar every year. It’s been getting a stronger and stronger field and the course has been improving every year.” Sergio Garcia. 

2007 Champion: Phil Mickelson (USA)

The nail-biting drama of the 2007 HSBC Champions proved beyond doubt that the Sheshan International Golf Club had matured into a worthy test for the world’s top golfers and the eventual victory by world number two Phil Mickelson rubber-stamped the credentials of the HSBC Champions as a truly world-class tournament.

With 11 holes left, Mickelson led by five shots and looked invincible. By the time he reached the par-five 18^th green, Mickelson had picked up the sixth of his penalty shots in his wayward final round as he risked going for the green in two, found water. He was only let into a three-way play-off when Englishman Ross Fisher chipped into the water too and made double bogey.

Playing the 18^th twice in the play-off with Fisher and Lee Westwood, Mickelson finally clinched the first significant win of his career outside the United States sticking one of his trademark “flop shots” to within six feet and holing out as daylight faded to make birdie.

“It is nice to win a tournament that Tiger has tried to win the last couple of years unsuccessfully. It's very exciting to me to be able to win this tournament.” Phil Mickelson.

2006: Yang Yong-Eun (KOR) 274 (-14)

At the time Yang Yong-Eun’s two-shot victory over Tiger Woods, denying the American his quest for a seventh-successive stroke-play victory, was viewed as a huge surprise, even though the Korean had four Japan Tour victories under his belt. With the benefit of hindsight the late-blooming Yang’s win, which halved his world-ranking to take him to 38^th position, was more an indication of a talent that would also take him into the winner’s circle on the PGA Tour.

The pattern was similar to David Howell’s win before, with Yang engineering himself a winning position on the front nine on the final day ahead of recent Major champions Woods, Retief Goosen and Michael Campbell. As in 2005, Tiger made a late charge, but again left himself too much to do.

“This is such a big thing that's happening to me right now, such a big moment in my life right now, that it's really hard for me to explain in words how I feel right now.” Yang Yong-Eun.

2005 Champion: David Howell (ENG) 268 (-20)

Tiger-mania struck Shanghai for the richest tournament to be staged in the Asia-Pacific region in 2005, but it was the softly-spoken Englishman David Howell, a member of Europe’s 2004 Ryder Cup winning team, who lifted the trophy in the inaugural tournament.

Holding a one-shot overnight lead, Howell quickly distanced himself from the world number one with four birdies in the opening seven holes. Woods, who would give Howell his “Cool Dude” nickname that day, made one last desperate bid for the win by going for the green at the short par-four 16^th. Tiger Woods instead found the water hazard, saying afterwards "I had to go for it and try to go for birdie or best part, eagle," and Howell held on to record the biggest victory of his career by three shots.

"We're all honored as golfers to have the chance to try and beat him. So I guess any time anyone plays against Tiger in the last day, it's almost like the FA Cup Final for the underdogs and I was able to come on top.” David Howell.

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