Sports Big Business No. 2986, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform
"Community" is a sports business theme dialogue program launched by the Voice of China Decisive Moment and sports big business, with the slogan of "Seeking Common Ground While Reserving Differences, Talking About Sports Hot Topics of Common Concern", which is broadcast once a week and every Friday night at 10:00 pm during the Voice of China's "Decisive Moment" column.
On August 5, the 90th program took the announcement of The retirement of Feng Shanshan, China's first golf Grand Slam champion and former women's golf world number one, to discuss the role of top international stars in promoting the development of China's golf industry. The "gossipers" involved were Voice of China reporter Zhang Wen, General Manager of Shanghai Linkes Golf Club Jiang Dachao, and Vice President of Sports Big Business Marketing and General Manager of Shengyi Interactive Luo Ranfeng.
This article is an excerpt from the text of this issue.
Reverse the one-sided understanding of golf in China
Zhang Wen: China's golf icon Feng Shanshan announced her retirement. From reaching the LPGA Tour to becoming Chinese mainland's first Grand Slam champion to becoming the first Chinese mainland player to reach the top of the world, Feng Shanshan has set a benchmark for Chinese players in the top international golf tournaments. The 15 years of her career development are also the 15 years of maturity of China's golf industry. Today we talk about the changes that have taken place in Chinese golf in the past 15 years. Ran Feng, what memories do you have of Feng Shanshan's career?
Ranfeng Luo: In 2007, Feng Shanshan successfully passed the LPGA (Women's Professional Golf Tour) qualification school in 2007, becoming the first Chinese mainland player to qualify for the LPGA. In the world's top tour, Feng Shanshan has always had a very solid performance, but the breakthrough moment was in 2011, when she won two games on the Japanese Tour and began to win the mainstream tour championship. Then in June 2012, she won her first LPGA title, which was the Grand Slam title, the LPGA Championship.
But it has to be said that such a wonderful achievement as winning a Grand Slam, the non-golf industry did not understand the meaning behind this at first. At the time I was a golf author for a portal. After Feng Shanshan wins the championship, I hope that this portal can give an entrance to the homepage to report this good news. However, the editor in charge of the maintenance of the home page refused, believing that the matter was not so important. It was not until the CCTV news also followed up the report that the other party realized that Feng Shanshan's victory was comparable to the Grand Slam breakthrough of Li Na in the tennis world that year, and it was a pity that there was no first time to spread.
Feng Shanshan won the 2012 LPGA Championship
However, everyone eventually realized that Chinese golf has a very powerful and dominant figure who can compete with any opponent at the highest level of play. Since then, the image of golf in China has been greatly improved.
Zhang Wen: Indeed, Feng Shanshan has played a very important role in changing the image of Chinese golf, including her bronze medal at the Rio Olympics. For most Chinese people, they do not necessarily understand the significance of the Tour for golf, but for olympic medals and gold medals, they attach great importance to them, so the Rio bronze medal is another highlight moment for Feng Shanshan. General Manager Jiang, where do you think Feng Shanshan's significance to Chinese golf is still reflected?
Jiang Dachao: Sports is an idol-led activity. After the appearance of idols, the motivation for enthusiasts is self-evident. After Feng Shanshan won the Grand Slam, the number of domestic players did surge, and the club market was also very hot. Domestic competitions are becoming more and more abundant, with youth, senior, professional, amateur, domestic and international competitions covering all levels.
Our club has an example of being inspired by Feng Shanshan. She said that she was not interested in anything other than golf, and took Feng Shanshan as an idol, so we also intended to guide her in her career direction. She actually got a professional certificate, competed around, aimed to break into the Japan Tour, and later became a good professional coach. Her story can be said to be very inspirational.
Entrepreneurship cultivates the next generation of Chinese golfers
Zhang Wen: Feng Shanshan is often referred to as The Third Generation of Chinese Golfers. Chinese players before her had their own development paths, Zhang Lianwei switched from athletics to golf, and Liang Wenchong went overseas after playing at home. Feng Shanshan, on the other hand, is directly starting her career from overseas, and it can be said that she has taken the footprints of her predecessors as a guide and gone out of her own way.
Luo Ranfeng: Feng Shanshan considers herself to be a "waddler" and hopes that her experience will bring some inspiration to the next generation of golfers. More typical is the exchange between me and her in an interview in 2019 (extended reading: Golf sister Feng Shanshan entrepreneurship to run a youth academy + preliminary test athletes brokerage). Ms. Feng said she wanted to transplant the teaching system of her coach, Gary Gilchrist, to China. Gilchrist has mentored Shanshan Feng since his business days, collaborating throughout his career, and his academy is based in Hilton Head Island, USA. Feng Shanshan envisions that if her teaching system lands in China, Chinese children will not have to go to the ocean alone like she did in the past.
Shanshan Feng and Gilchrist
Gilchrist was very pleased to hear this idea. So by Feng Shanshan's mother, Ms. Zheng Yuyan, Feng Shanshan founded Shanshan Sports in her hometown of Guangzhou, formed a coaching team, introduced Gilchrist's teaching program, and began to promote youth golf.
Feng Shanshan hopes that the training system she introduced will work seamlessly with Gilchrist's academy. Chinese young golf talents can get better exercise at home and quickly adapt to the overseas teaching system when they study abroad.
Of course, Feng Shanshan's significance of "whiggling" at the professional level is more obvious. Players such as Lin Xiyu and He Muni, who later joined the LPGA, can gain a lot of experience from her in traveling, coping with the media, and setting up training schedules.
The current retirement may help the development of golf in China
Zhang Wen: Yao Ming of the NBA, a group of Chinese tennis golden flowers who won Grand Slams, Ding Junhui of Snooker and even Zhou Guanyu of later F1, plus Feng Shanshan, all have "typical" significance, helping China's latecomers understand how to be a professional player in a top sports league. But people often say that golf is a "longevity sport", Feng Shanshan retired at the age of 33, is it a little earlier?
Jiang Dachao: There are still certain laws in the sports life of professional golfers, and I am personally not too surprised by Feng Shanshan's announcement of retirement. In recent years, she has established a college, done youth promotion, etc., in fact, it is already a foreshadowing, but it is only a question of which time point to choose to retire.
Golf – especially professional golf – is still a competitive sport, and winning is almost an essential trait of professional athletes. When athletes think that their body and mind no longer match the requirements of professional competition, retirement is just a matter of going down the water.
I am reminded of an exchange with Jack Nicklaus, the course designer of our 18-time Grand Slam champion and our Link club. He visited our club and I asked him if he was still playing while I was chatting. The great player said he had stopped playing for a long time. I was surprised and asked, "You love golf so much, why don't you play?" Nicklaus said, "Quite simply, my physical condition after retiring, especially now, I can't play the ball I want." So I don't fight. "He told me that later he played more tennis.
Aside from the usual masters kickoff ceremony, Nicklaus has rarely actually swung
This confirms what I call the traits of good athletes, who want to be the best, who can't do the best, and are willing not to do it. I guess Feng Shanshan's retirement has a similar mentality. She believes that her peak period has passed, and she cannot achieve the purpose of pursuing excellence and pursuing the ultimate, so she chooses to leave.
On the other hand, as Ran Feng said just now, People in China's golf community often have a sense of mission in their hearts and hope that golf can take root and blossom in China and take the road of sustainable development. The best way to do this is to get more people involved in the sport in a variety of ways, especially teenagers. In recent years, the market for golf training and education has developed rapidly, and the future is relatively promising, which can be said to be worth pursuing as a career. Some famous players and even former professional athletes, if they are engaged in teaching, can play a very good guiding effect. Feng Shanshan's investment in this aspect is naturally very promising.
Therefore, from the perspective of comprehensive sports life, sports pursuit and industry mission, Feng Shanshan's retirement is inevitable and reasonable, and it is even likely that it will play a greater role in the development of China's golf industry than postponing retirement.
The role of the national team coach is special
Zhang Wen: At the same time as feng shanshan retired, she announced that she had become the head coach of the women's team of the Chinese national training team. It's also another path she took after retiring from the army. From a professional master to coaching in the Olympic system, how do you see her prospects on the road to coaching?
Luo Ranfeng: I am also curious about how this subtle change in the career transfer system will be reflected. Golf is also a sport in which professional events are the best training mechanism. Whatever we expect from Chinese athletes, it is up to us to see if they are world-class, and ultimately it comes down to whether they can achieve excellent results in the most mainstream tour.
For example, the Rio Olympic champion is South Korea's Park In-fai. Her strength is reflected in seven-time Grand Slam winner and world number one. The Olympic gold medal was just another honor she had just received at her peak. The other top players in the Olympic arena, especially women's players, are among the top players in the LPGA or at least the fans are familiar with the name. Whether a player can achieve a good result in the Olympic Games, in fact, it can be seen by playing in the Tour.
Rio Olympic gold, silver and bronze medalists Park In-fei (center), Gao Baojing, Feng Shanshan,
They are all good at becoming famous on the Tour
So for Feng Shanshan's coaching role, I am more looking forward to what additional knowledge she can bring to the members of the national team. Unlike other sports, golf doesn't work by concentrating the best players in specific places to train and implementing targeted development strategies. The function of the national team coach may be more for the Olympic Games, the Asian Games or even the National Games and other major competitions.
National team players usually have their own training rhythm and coaching team in the professional scene, and what kind of guidance role Feng Shanshan will play in the Olympic scene is difficult to judge or guess in my personal cognitive range. I can only say that Feng Shanshan has a big winning point in that she has proven herself in both the professional scene and the Olympic scene, which means that she knows how to balance these two models. In front of the national team members, she has her own experience and voice. Then she may be able to guide the disciples of the national team with the experience of balancing Olympic system events and professional events as the guide of young Chinese players in the LPGA, so that the disciples can better cope with the Olympic system events.
China's youth golf environment Feng Shanshan is good
Zhang Wen: Now when we look back at Feng Shanshan, we not only pay attention to how much she has achieved in the professional arena personally, but also pay attention to how china's golf sport has developed rapidly, including the number of young players, while she has achieved good results.
I saw a set of data, in the 2012 London Olympics cycle, there were about 3,000 registered golfers in the mainland, and by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics cycle, the number of registered professional players has reached 100,000, which I feel is a very amazing development.
Mr. Jiang, according to your observation, in recent years, China's junior golf participants are not more and more. In addition to the driving role of idols such as Feng Shanshan just mentioned, what efforts has the industry made to this end?
Jiang Dachao: In my field of vision, I have indeed witnessed a huge change in the situation of Chinese teenagers participating in golf. Before coming to the show, I just got a statistic from the Shanghai Municipal High School Association. There are 16 districts in Shanghai, and there are currently nearly 600 registered junior golfers, an increase of 150 in the first half of this year alone.
This "600", just the number of young players who have reached the registration conditions, reflects the number of children who have reached a certain level of skill. The industry generally believes that the number of people who actually participate in golf is about 30 to 50 times this number. In other words, there should be between 18,000 and 30,000 young people in Shanghai exposed to golf. That's a very encouraging number.
The 2020 HSBC Junior Finals were held at Linkes Club
As a club manager, I have also found that in the past two or three years, members have been playing with their children more and more. The club itself has been freeing up more resources for teenagers to use under the premise of balancing the needs of members and stimulating their desire to play, including opening the real grass driving range and getting off the field during non-busy hours. The club also hosts youth events wherever possible, such as the HSBC Junior Championships for eight consecutive years, which has been very positive.
These are the points of our specific efforts to form the face of golf culture promotion. I would also like to add that the Shanghai Higher Education Association is vigorously promoting a golf into the campus program, starting from the lower grades. To this end, the association held the city's golf club public welfare league last year, with the goal of raising about 25 million yuan to invest in the campus plan. With planned programmes and financial support, I believe these efforts will have an impact in the near future.
Zhang Wen: Golf is a sport with a long industrial chain, and producers, operators, athletes, etc. are all carriers of golf culture, which can directly or indirectly affect the audience's understanding and perception of golf. As an athlete, Feng Shanshan presents the fresh and sunny positive energy of this sport. More teenagers involved in the sport have the hope of spreading the spirit of respect, courtesy and self-discipline of golf. Thanks to both of you for participating in the show, we will see you next time!