Before the first shot was struck at the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan Championship in Taoyuan City last week, the big news was not the players who were there but those who weren’t. Early in the week, after the final field had been announced, former world No. 1 Shanshan Feng and LPGA rookie Yu Liu, both Chinese nationals, withdrew at the last minute. Neither player cited ill health nor other standard reasons for backing out.
Reuters reported that a high-ranking Chinese official approached both players at the previous week’s LPGA event in Shanghai and told them to withdraw from the Taiwan event. This comes as tensions mount between the island nation and its communist neighbor.
China long has insisted that Taiwan is a breakaway province and not, in fact, an independent nation. That rift has spilled into sports. International sports federations, including the International Olympic Committee, have attempted to appease the Chinese by referring to Taiwan as “Chinese Taipei,” the name the Chinese government has assigned it as a province. As recently as last month, four golfers from Taiwan played in the UL International Crown under a flag they don’t recognize. At the first International Crown in 2014 at Caves Valley in Maryland (51 miles from the center of Washington, D.C.), the Taiwanese ambassador to the United States walked onto the first tee carrying a different flag than the one the players wore.
China has been particularly aggressive with Taiwan since 2016 when the island nation elected its first woman president, Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the independence-minded Progressive Democratic Party. Tsai is also the first president to have never held an elected executive office and the first of aboriginal descent, none of which sits well with the hard-line government of China’s president, Xi Jinping. As recently as last Monday, the United States, which recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign nation, sent two warships into the Taiwan Strait.
In the midst of all this are the golfers. Feng, who won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, has been in this situation before. Before the 2017 Lotte Championship in Hawaii, Chinese officials told Feng to withdraw. Lotte is a South Korean retailer. At the time China and South Korea were in a dispute about the latter’s implementation of a missile defense system.
Always gregarious, Feng did her best to stand out after the Olympics. When President Xi came by to shake all the Olympians’ hands, Feng said, in Mandarin, “Oh, Mr. President, you are so handsome,” a compliment that caused the normally stoic communist leader to smile and shake Feng’s hand a second time.
After the Lotte incident Feng kept her mouth shut. She did so again last week. But Liu, who has had three top-10s in her rookie year, including at tie for seventh at the Evian Championship and a tie for ninth in Shanghai two weeks ago, told Reuters through online messaging that her agents “said I can’t respond regarding the issue of withdrawing from the competition.” She added that the withdrawal was “not for personal reasons.”
Feng and Liu were the only LPGA players from China eligible for the fall Asian swing. But two weeks ago in Shanghai, 17-year-old Chinese native Wenbo Liu finished tied for second and held a share of the lead during the final round.
A member of the final threesome on Sunday in Taiwan was already celebrating long before firing a 73 on Sunday to finish tied for eighth. Jin Young Ko, who won the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open in her first start as an LPGA member, and had 10 other top-10 finishes prior to the Swinging Skirts, locked up Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year honors, it was announced early last week. With four events remaining at the time of the announcement, Ko was a mathematical lock ahead of Women’s British Open champion Georgia Hall.
“I feel honored to clinch the Rookie of the Year award here on the LPGA Tour, which I wasn’t able to get on the (Korean LPGA) Tour,” the 23-year-old from South Korea said. “I really enjoyed my first season on the LPGA and I am looking forward to having another energetic season next year.”
She’s a superstar in the making. Ko speaks English well, has an engaging personality and is beloved among her peers.
And can she ever play. Before becoming an LPGA member, Ko won 10 times on the KLPGA Tour and won the 2017 LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship in her home country, beating a quality field of LPGA veterans. She leads the tour in greens hit in regulation (77.44 percent) and is second in driving accuracy (hitting 84.14 percent of her fairways) and second in scoring average (69.6) with enough events left to keep the Vare Trophy up for grabs. Only Nancy Lopez and In Gee Chun have won the Vare Trophy for low scoring average in their rookie seasons.
The past four Rookie of the Year winners – Ko, Sung Hyun Park, Chun and Sei Young Kim – all hail from South Korea. The fifth-most recent winner, Lydia Ko, was born there. In fact, since Se Ri Pak won the award in 1998, 12 South Koreans have taken home Rookie of the Year honors, including former world No. 1s Jiyai Shin and So Yeon Ryu.
It was the third week in a row on the tour’s Asian swing that a native of the host country was in the mix late. In South Korea, it was eventual winner Chun, who is still based out of Seoul. Then in Shanghai, it was the Chinese teenager Liu, who finished T2 and had chances to win late into the final round.
Last week it was Wei-Ling Hsu, a native of Taipei City, who entered the final round tied for the lead with eventual winner Nelly Korda. It was the first time Hsu had led going into a final round.
But she had great memories of golf in her home country. When Yani Tseng won the inaugural LPGA Taiwan Championship in 2011, Hsu was a youngster in the gallery cheering her nation’s best player.
This year, those cheers were for Hsu. “It's very cool that when you make a putt, people are yelling and so happy for me,” Hsu said. “I definitely feel so much support that I never had.”
Hsu shot 74 on Sunday and finished T6.
Staff and Wire Reports