After a big year in 2023 sealed golf’s place among Hong Kong’s elite sports, some of the city’s top amateurs begin their season in Thailand on Thursday looking to cement that status.
The Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific Championship gets under way on the Waterside Course at Siam Country Club, with a team of six, lead by last year’s third place finisher Sophie Han, taking on the likes of defending champion Eila Galitsky and runner-up Minsol Kim.
Han and Arianna Lau did as much as anybody to propel golf to Tier A status at the Hong Kong Sports Institute from 2025, finishing as runners up at the IMG Junior World Championship and combining to win the team event at the same tournament.
The pair will be joined in Pattaya by Siuue Wu and Hoi Ki-lau, as well as relative newcomers Sabrina Wong and Angela Yin.
Tim Tang, the head coach of the Golf Association of Hong Kong, China, said there was “a buzz around” the city’s players as they headed into the new season.
While Taichi Kho, who won gold at the Asian Games last September and begins his second year on the Asian Tour in two weeks, is the city’s most prominent player, its amateurs are the bedrock, and in delivering his yearly report to the association, Tang highlighted how far the game had progressed over the past 12 months.
At the start of 2022, there were 40 Hong Kong players (23 boys, 17 girls) in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, with four boys and two girls inside the top 1,000.
By this month, the city had 46 players (22 boys, 24 girls), ranked and of those seven boys and seven girls were in the top 1,000.
“We have the top players inspiring the younger ones,” Tang said. “It motivates everyone to just keep pushing. It just shows that our talent pool has definitely increased in the past few years.
“I think that’s the big difference we have seen and now we have to keep going out there and building on that.”
Wong is one of that new generation, a 12-year-old now based in Scotland, her performances over the past two years have earned her a spot in the Hong Kong squad.
Last year, Wong won the girls’ 11 age division of the US Kids Golf European Championship in Scotland by 15 shots, and the girls’ under-12 division of the Champion of Champions event in Northern Ireland by 12 strokes.
In the 2023 Scottish Girls’ Open she won the under-12 title and was runner-up in the under-14 competition.
“There are a lot of great players out there,” she said. “This is a great opportunity for me to learn from them and gain more experience from the tournament.”
While Galitsky is defending champion, Kim will be the highest ranked player in the 90-strong field, which includes nine from the top-50 and 19 from the top-100.
There is plenty to play for too, with the winner earning exemptions into three major championships in 2024 – the AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews, the Amundi Evian Championship in France, and the Chevron Championship in the US – as well as to the 121st Women’s Amateur Championship and the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.