Chinaʼs golfing prodigies have burst on to the world golfing scene, showing just how far the sport has come.

In 2013, while most Chinese teenagers would have been busy studying for the countryʼs seemingly endless conveyor belt of exams, the then 14-year-old Guan Tianlang was working towards something a bit different—his debut appearance at the golf master tournament. While that might suggest an isolated and freakish level of ability, Guan isnʼt alone in making serious headway into the sport, and the presence of such prodigies shows just how far golf has come in China and the impact theyʼre beginning to have on the highest levels of the sport.

Unsurprisingly, these developments have caught the eye of the sportʼs establishment, with the legendary professional golfer Gary Player describing the progress of Guan on his blog for Golf Magazine as the “most historic moment golf has experienced in [a] lifetime”.

All this from a player of sport that was banned as a capitalist pastime until as recently as 1984, and which saw a ban on the construction of golf courses in 2004. (The policy was an abject failure—between 2004 and 2011, the number more than tripled from 170 to over 600, according to HSBCʼs Golf 2020 Vision report.)

“If you look at the results from the big junior tournaments around the world, thatʼs where you are seeing the impact of China because you will see a lot of Chinese names and some of them are doing quite well,” claims Dan Washburn, Chief Content Officer at the Asia Society and author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream. “What you are seeing is that this is really the first generation of golfers in China that could play from a very young age and can afford to play and can afford high quality coaching and can afford to travel to international tournaments.”

First came the Chinese golfer Andy Zhang, who qualified for the US Open in 2012, at the age of 14, after the player Paul Casey withdrew with a shoulder injury. He began playing at the age of six, moved to the US at the age of 10 and is a graduate of HSBCʼs Junior Golf Program in China.

And at just 12 years of age, Ye Wocheng became the youngest golfer to play in a European Tour event after he qualified for the Volvo China Open in 2013. “Iʼve dreamed of this since I was a boy,” he said at the time to some amusement. Neither Guan nor Ye had been born when golf superstar Tiger Woods won his first major title at the 1997 Masters.

The success of these wunderkids has not gone unnoticed by the Chinese public either. Fifteen-year-old Guanʼs star has risen quickly and he drew unprecedented crowds of spectators at the China Open in early 2014.

via Golf in China: A Chinese Tiger Woods?.