Celebrated in Asia, Little Known in .. - 高爾夫球

Celebrated in Asia, Little Known in America
By KAREN CROUSE

ORLANDO, Fla. — It is the all-American girl’s study as conceived by a
Hollywood set director. In addition to her growing collection of trophies,
Yani Tseng has displayed two dozen Starbucks mugs from all over the world, an
ad for a local pizzeria and a plush Angry Bird scowling from a loving cup.
Only the 8 ½-by-11 certificate noting Tseng’s completion of a Level 4
English class hints at her deepest roots.

Tseng, 22, is the world’s No. 1 female golfer, a one-name celebrity in her
native Taiwan and the spark of the sport’s next big boom, in her homeland
and in China.

She is the youngest golfer, man or woman, to win five major titles. For her
next act, Tseng wants to win over America. She may find it easier to become
the first woman to win a calendar Grand Slam.

With the exception of superstars like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, golfers
are faint stars in the American firmament, outshined by football, basketball
and baseball players. For a female golfer to make the rounds of the morning
talk shows, all the planets have to align. It happened in September, but the
player was not Tseng, who had won eight tournaments by then. It was Lexi
Thompson, a tall, blond American teenager fresh off her first professional
victory.

Over the past decade, the L.P.G.A. has had a proliferation of South Koreans
in its ranks after the success of Se Ri Pak. Since 2008, its overall schedule
has been downsized, but the number of tournaments in Asia has been rising.

Among the official events added this year was one in Taiwan, which Tseng
fittingly won for the 10th of her 11 worldwide titles in 2011.

The crowds that met Tseng at the airport when she arrived for the event were
so large, she required the same security detail that accompanied the pop star
Lady Gaga when she performed there. It was the same story on the course,
where Tseng’s large following led her 92-year-old grandmother to ask if she
had paid to have all the people brought in.

“It was so much fun,” Tseng said, adding, “Now I know what Tiger feels.”

After the success of the event, organizers in Taiwan paid handsome appearance
fees to lure 8 of the top 10 female golfers to New Taipei City this week for
what amounts to a curtain call: an 18-hole skins game, followed by the Taiwan
Ladies Professional Golf Association Invitational.

Tseng’s fame in Asia dwarfs her profile in the United States, which raises
the question: in an increasingly globalized world, does it matter if the
brightest stars shine in the East or West? Robert Thompson, a professor of
mass media and popular culture at Syracuse, said, “We have this prejudice
that it does not matter if you’re huge anywhere else, that the only real
sign of success is if you’re famous in the United States.”

He added: “If I were advising her, I don’t think I’d put being famous in
the United States at the top of my list. When you’re really famous in Asia,
there are billions who know you, compared to millions in the U.S. I’d tell
her to keep playing the way she’s playing and if she doesn’t make the
highlights on ESPN, oh well.”

Last year, a Chinese company, looking ahead to 2016, when golf becomes an
Olympic sport, reportedly offered Tseng millions of dollars, the use of a
private jet and an apartment in Beijing to change her nationality so she
could represent China.

“I didn’t think too much about that,” Tseng said. “I’m just very proud
to represent Chinese everywhere.”

At a tournament in China last month, Tseng was asked about playing against
men, as her mentor Annika Sorenstam once did in a PGA Tour event. She said if
the opportunity presented itself, she would like to try it. Within days, a
tournament director in Puerto Rico offered her a sponsor exemption to his
2012 event.

“It was really nice to have people who really pay attention to you,” said
Tseng, who declined the invitation. “I feel like every word I say now, I can
really inspire people.”

Tseng may be on the vanguard of a new world order, but as long as Madison
Avenue is in New York, she will polish her English, wiggle into form-fitting
outfits and do her best to woo American advertisers.

“We know Yani has a couple of strikes against her in America,” Tseng’s
adviser, Ernie Huang, said. “One, she is a woman, and second, she is Asian.
It does not diminish her desire to be a sports icon, and in order to
accomplish that, she still needs to embrace Western society.

“We have been pretty patient. We don’t care how long it takes. We’re like
that old Smith Barney commercial. We want to make money the old-fashioned
way. We want to earn it.”

Tseng is often compared to Sorenstam, a former No. 1 player with a powerful
game. Temperamentally, she is more like Shaquille O’Neal, the playful former
N.B.A. superstar.

Like O’Neal, who invited reporters to his retirement party, Tseng opened her
Orlando home to members of the golf news media before the first round of the
season-ending CME Group Titleholders last month at Grand Cypress Resort, a
30-minute commute from the gated community where she lives. Her caddie, Jason
Hamilton, grilled steaks, and his fiancée, Katy Mullin, made appetizers.

Dressed like Harry Potter in a black cape and black-rimmed glasses, Tseng
delivered a welcome speech to her guests. That would have been unimaginable
four years ago, when Tseng’s command of English was so poor, she was
reluctant to speak.

At 18, Tseng moved with her mother to the Southern California desert town of
Beaumont to work on her game. She had announced herself three years earlier
with a victory over Michelle Wie in the final of the 2004 United States Women
’s Amateur Public Links.

Tseng turned pro in 2007 and earned her L.P.G.A. playing privileges for the
2008 season, when she won her first major, at the L.P.G.A. Championship, and
rookie of the year honors. She won 23 worldwide titles in her career, 12 on
the L.P.G.A. tour.

On the course, Tseng is a beguiling mix of fire and nice; she walks with her
shoulders forward, but her smile takes the edge off her aggression.

She dresses in slacks or shorts, and would sooner hit out of a poison ivy
patch than wear a skirt to play. So the photographs of her in the upscale
Taiwanese lifestyle magazines scattered throughout her 5,400-square-foot
house drew double takes. In one magazine, Tseng kicked up a heel in a green
minidress and dark stockings with a leopard-print scarf tied loosely around
her neck. Her short hair was moussed and styled, and her face was luminous.

Tseng turned away from that page and thumbed through another magazine. She
stopped at a photo layout in which she wore a tailored black suit and a
fedora, and leaned forward on a stool.

“This is my favorite,” she said, sounding more bashful than boastful.

The former L.P.G.A. player Val Skinner, now a Golf Channel analyst who has
walked countless rounds alongside Tseng, said: “She’s always had an
openness and a vulnerability about her. There’s a humility in her that’s
different than what people might expect.”

Playing pool in her recreational room, Tseng strutted after her shots the
same way she does after hitting a putt on a perfect line. Then, after
collecting $20 from her vanquished opponent, she tried to give the money back.

Tseng’s older brother, Hung-Wei, had just arrived for a visit. Tseng
followed their father, a recreational golfer, on to the course, but her
brother briefly raced motorcycles professionally. “He had more sponsors than
me,” she said.

She was kidding. Tseng is the Arnold Palmer of women’s golf, increasing the
sport’s visibility with her genial nature and go-for-broke playing style.

“The young golfers are increasing because of Yani,” Julie Wang, a Taiwanese
journalist, said by e-mail. “And China, golf is popular there, so lots of
Chinese fans are proud of Yani. She is a hero in our era.”

Tseng drew more fans at the L.P.G.A. Taiwan Championship in October than
Woods did at the 1999 Johnnie Walker Classic in Taiwan.

“We had 60,000 people in four days come, 20,000 fans in the final round,”
Wang said. “We never had a sight like that before.”

Wang, who has written a biography of Tseng, said Tseng last year was voted
the fourth most influential figure in Taiwan in a television poll behind the
president, the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party and the
electronics tycoon Tai-Ming Gou.

Taiwan has had other star athletes: pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, who played last
season for the Washington Nationals; Chi Cheng, the 1968 Olympic bronze
medalist in the women’s 80-meter hurdles; Liang-Huan Lu, the 1971 British
Open runner-up; and the golfer T. C. Chen, who led after the first three
rounds of the 1985 United States Open before finishing second.

“Those stars are old now; we need new blood,” Julie Wang wrote.

The night after the gathering at her house, Tseng was honored at the L.P.G.A.
’s year-end awards dinner. She sat with her family and made changes in her
speech until she was called to the podium to receive her second consecutive
Player of the Year award.

Tseng acknowledged Louise Suggs, a founding member of the L.P.G.A. who was in
the audience, and thanked everybody and her mother for their support. She
vowed to continue improving, to keep the L.P.G.A. in the public eye with her
fine play.

“We have a long way to go,” Tseng said, “to get the recognition we deserve.
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