At the age of four, Guan Tianlang picked up a golf club for the first time. At five, he watched his first Masters. At six, he could impersonate Jim Furyk’s swing. Teeing off in his first Masters as a 14-year-old, then, merely seems like a logical culmination.
What were you doing when you were 14IJ Perhaps you shared Guan’s slightly gawky adolescent demeanour, his cocky waggle of the head and recently broken voice.
Perhaps you shared his ardent passion for golf, even dreamed of winning a Major one day. But it is unlikely you were swinging your way around Augusta with Ben Crenshaw as your practice partner, as Guan did on Monday. This is the stuff of which teenage dreams are made.
What was Crenshaw doing when he was 14IJ “I had a girlfriend,” he said. “I did not play a lot of golf that summer.”
Not only is Guan playing a good deal of golf, he is doing it better than any player his age. By dint of beating an adult field to win the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Thailand in November, he assured himself of a place at Augusta and a place in the history books, beating Matteo Manassero’s record by over two years.
His coach Danny Webb believes he will become China’s first major winner. And he was born 18 months after Tiger Woods won his first green jacket. (“That’s just frightening,” was Woods’s reaction.)
His friends and family call him lang lang, or langly. He has brought with him a pile of homework from his Guangzhou middle school. He idolises Woods, wearing Nike from head to cleats.
On a recent trip to California, in amongst the hours of practice and putting drills, was a specially-arranged visit to Disneyland.
He reads obsessively on the history of the game, watches instructional videos, immerses himself in a way that characterises the tireless child obsessive.