Kyi Hla Han
Asian Tour boss Kyi Hla Han said Chinese golfers were “suffering” on rival circuit OneAsia and warned that the country may struggle to qualify a player for the keenly awaited 2016 Olympics.
Kyi Hla also rejected comments from OneAsia that there was room for two tours in Asia, saying the number of new tournaments had dropped off and sponsors were perplexed by in-fighting between the two circuits.
He said no Chinese players other than established star Liang Wenchong had finished top-10 on the OneAsia tour, an initiative that has joined the Chinese, Korean and Australian domestic circuits since 2009.
The former professional from Myanmar said Asian nations are clamouring to have players qualify for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, where golfers will enter via their rankings.
“If China is planning to have a player on the Olympics, they haven’t had a top-10 player on any OneAsia event in the last three years. So I don’t know where their development process is going,” he told AFP.
“We had some Chinese players on our tour who were showing some potential. Now they’re not playing on our tour, but they haven’t shown anything in terms of their world rankings.”
He added that it was “embarrassing” that Chinese golfers were not figuring strongly, when Siddikur Rahman from lowly Bangladesh was able to win an Asian Tour event last year and play on the European Tour.
Kyi Hla, reacting to comments from OneAsia chief executive Ben Sellenger, also denied their rivalry had boosted Asian golf, saying the Asian Tour had dropped from 32 to 26 tournaments while OneAsia had introduced few new events.
“I don’t think companies really want to get involved in all this in-fighting. Frankly it’s not a positive development,” he said.
Kyi Hla also slammed OneAsia as “not a proper tour” because it lacks a membership structure and players qualify via other circuits. And he questioned whether some events were attracting enough sponsorship to survive.
“It’s not a proper tour — it’s just having a series of events. Any marketing agency in the world could start doing this,” he said.
“And I have yet to see any tournaments outside of Korea and China that have a title sponsor. We just go where the market is and any tournaments we have are pretty much funded by the market forces.
“We’re working as a tour, not as another series of tournaments trying to ambush and get their status up by picking the best players from every other tour.”
Kyi Hla also defended the Asian Tour’s policy of banning members from appearing on OneAsia, saying it was an initiative introduced by the players.
The Asian Tour enjoyed rapid growth until 2008 and introduced a series of events which were co-sanctioned with the European Tour, attracting a number of high-profile players to the region.
But its development has been set back by the arrival of OneAsia, which brands itself as a premier circuit of US$1 million-plus events with ambitions to rival the lucrative European and American tours.
