Why Y.E. Yang?

[Kumabjorn]

Don't get me wrong, he won the PGA fair and square, no beef whatsoever.

No, my query is more along the line of why not someone from Japan? Golf in Korea is a fairly recent endeavor while it has been around in Japan for at least a 100 years (albeit not the most prolific of games).

A long time ago players from the British Isles dominated the game, then Francis Ouimet came along and the resurgence of American players up until the domination of Jack Nicklaus and now again with Tiger Woods. But after Nicklaus there was a shift back to Europe with players like Ballesteros and Langer.

In Asia golf was dominated by Japan for a long time. Tsuneyuki Nakajima had an excellent opportunity to win the Open Championship until he found the green bunker on the Road Hole, I think he needed five shots to get it in the hole. I was actually in Japan at that time and can clearly remember the TV announcer completely braking down and crying uncontrolably on air. A little later Jumbo Ozaki dominated Japanese golf, but he was heavily involved with the yakuza and hardly ever competed outside Japan and was even once accused by no less than Greg Norman of cheating. After that he never played outside Japan again.

Shigeki Maruyama cetainly looked like he had the game required (shot a 58 in US Open qualifier) . Yet, instead of a Japanese player being the first to capture a major title it was a Korean, and not even their #1 player.

I guess that - in a rather perverted sense - truly prooves what a special position TW occupies withing the game. But does anyone here have any theories as to why a Japanese player haven't been able to brake through?

[nututhugame]

One of my guesses is that (and this is more of a general assumption of asian, not just Japanese) they don't have a sell sell sell everything and everybody type thing going on over there. What i'm getting at with that is that I don't think they have the sponsorship conglomorate to help up and comers get to the next level that we do in the west. They have to be better than our good to get noticed. And somewhere along the line someone with some clout in the golf world has to notice them. There are tons of great golfers abroad flying under the radar i'm sure. I could be totally wrong about that, but that's just the feeling I get.

Oh, and let's not forget that Yang beat Tiger over in asia. I'm sure that helped.

[Kumabjorn]

Interesting, I hadn't really thought of that aspect. Obviously Bridgestone is a major sponsor in golf, but companies like Toyota, Matsushita (National, Panasonic) in Japan or Samsung, LG, and Hyundai (they do sponsor some LPGA players) in Korea are kind of conspicuous by their absence. Also, I don't think there are any large scale junior programs like we have here in Sweden or in the US run by AJGA.