Promoting Chinese culture around the globe
To what degree can the China Tour benefit the country’s golf development?
Jonathan Ouyang is the China Tour’s regular season chief of operations What are the highlights of this year’s China Tour?
China’s golf has been in the spotlight since Li Haotong won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic in January and Feng Shanshan retained the world’s No 1 female ranking, so this is already a great time for Chinese golf.
This year, we have rejoined the Official World Golf Rankings and expanded our cooperation with more organizations, including the European Tour and the Asian Tour. At the same time, we are constantly striving to improve the tour’s quality, providing players with better services and adding more tournaments. Our goal is to build the China Tour into both a national golf brand and a prime international golf platform.
Chinese players will have more opportunities to play in advanced international competition through our tour. Also, more foreign players will come to China.
The tour is also a promotion of Chinese culture to the world. Many of our foreign players, who represent more than 30 countries and regions, have started to learn to speak Chinese. Meanwhile, we are also focusing on the development of China’s next generation of golfers. We will provide more opportunities for young amateurs to compete on our tour and invite domestic and foreign pros to host training sessions for golf-loving children. Any plans for the future?
We will expand our global influence, with North America and Australia our primary targets. There are many golfloving overseas Chinese, and this will also be a bridge that can help foreign players to compete on our tour.
For the domestic market, we plan to build a three-tier system, focusing on developing the tour for young and amateur golfers. We also might establish a China Tour super series in addition to what we have now, which will mainly be played in China’s first-tier cities.