Golf returned to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1904 in Rio this summer, when men and women competed individually on the new Olympic Golf Course, including top Chinese golfer Feng Shanshan.
Born in 1989 in south China’s Guangzhou, Feng currently ranks fifth in the Women’s World Golf Rankings as of early June, moving up from last year’s sixth.
Feng is the first Chinese player to become a member of the LPGA Tour, which she joined in 2008. Feng has four victories on the tour, including the 2012 LPGA Championship, which she won as the first and only player from mainland China. Amy Alcott, LPGA Hall of Famer and three-time Kraft Nabisco winner has praised Feng as a “very, very talented young player”.
"I was very impressed with her putting and just her overall game, just how she managed herself on the golf course. I look for her to do great things,'' said Alcott.
Although China has a relative short history of golf, the city of Guangzhou is among the first few cities in China where the sport has thrived. Feng started playing the game at age 10, with the influence of her father, Feng Xiong, who worked at the golf association in their hometown.
At that time a teenage girl, Feng would train at least 2 hours per day, hitting some 200 strokes. Within a year, Feng surpassed her father who had started playing the game almost at the same time, and as a 12-year-old, Feng aimed to become the first full-time member of the LPGA tour from China. Feng made her professional debut at the end of 2007, and won her first champion during the Meiji Cup in Japan in August 2011.
A first timer for the Olympic Games, Feng said that golf is still such a high-end sport for ordinary Chinese to participate in, and she hopes to promote the image of golf and to showcase the spirit and virtuosity of Chinese golfers while in Rio.
Now 27 years old, this rising star in China still enjoys a regular life away from the green. Like most other people her age, Feng likes watching Korean TV dramas a lot and playing computer games in her spare time.
