China has yet to give birth to a star who will change the fate of golf in this country. Haotong Li has been the great reference in recent years since he emerged in 2017 with his third place in the British Open. He had a good 2018, but his career has been full of ups and downs until he returned to the top positions in DP World Tour tournaments in the last two seasons, especially his fourth place this summer in the British Open.
While Li remains the benchmark for the Asian country, a new promise is slowly emerging. His name is Yanhan Zhou, ‘the little boy’, and he is only 17 years old. This week he won the Hongyun Lang Wanning Open, in what is his fifth victory of 2025 on the China Tour, but the fact is that he already has nine victories on this circuit. This is the most wins anyone has achieved at his age in world ranking-sanctioned events.
He still has five tournaments ahead of him this year to continue to climb the rankings. He is ranked 300th in the world and obviously since the China Tour his rise has been slower. This year he finished 43rd in the China Open, a tournament shared by the Asian Tour and the DP World Tour, and the following week, in a similar event, he finished 31st in the Hainan Classic. He recently finished 14th in the Hangzhou Open, an event that was shared with the HotelPlanner Tour (second tier of the DPWT) and in the Hainan Open, of similar category, he missed the cut.
When the DP World Tour landed in China this year for the tournaments of the so-called Asian Swing, we learned more about Yanhan Zhou. His father Xunshu, who was a professional golfer, is his coach and caddie. In fact, his story is the thread that runs through Dan Washburn’s 2014 novel ‘The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream’.
“He is everything to me. He makes me work harder because my father is a very hard-working person,” Yanhan told the DP World Tour. The young man aims high, as it could not be otherwise: “My dream is to be the best in the world.” His father acknowledged that golf changed his fate and that of his family: “It changed my life. And thanks to golf I was able to raise my son to where he is today. I feel very proud.”
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