Kelvin Inge Interview

How far can Hong Kong golf go? Can Hong Kong sides beat the likes of Korea, Japan and China?

They’re obviously much bigger with many more courses than we have, so it’s going to be difficult to beat countries with more than a 100 million people when we only have eight million. People forget that Hong Kong is a city and not a country. But there are teams like Singapore who we should definitely be trying to beat. The biggest thing for Hong Kong going forward will be trying to bridge that gap between amateur and professional. It would be hard to have 10 world-class pros but with more Hong Kong players playing competitively both in the junior and collegiate system in the US, which is very much a springboard to the professional ranks, the chance of this happening is better. Tiffany is the ideal role model. She is not a private club member but she has achieved a great deal in her young career.

But Hong Kong golf is in a good place. This year we’ve hosted the Queen Sirikit Cup and the Hong Kong Ladies Open. Our players were competitive in both those events. We are going to be hosting the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in October and are also looking to take on one or two more world-class events in the near future.

Talking of the Asia-Pacific Amateur, how big a boon is that going to be for Hong Kong?

It’s going to be tremendous. We automatically get two places but we may get up to 10. Of course we would like one of our players to win and earn a place in the Masters - but that is a rather unrealistic prospect. It would be nice to see our players competing on such a stage. The Masters Tournament runs this world-class international event and TV coverage is going to be very much worldwide.

Is there anything you would have liked to have done differently?

I am at ease with what we’ve done. Of course there were times when we weren’t sure if we had taken the right path and that we could have done things differently. Hindsight is always 20/20. On the whole, I think we’ve really achieved a great deal and hopefully we can maintain our progress. The programme is now very structured but we do need numbers - in that I mean we need lots of juniors and adults playing golf. Having a large pool of players is surely the only way that we can find our own Jordan Spieth or Lydia Ko.