Hangzhou, China: Five members of the triumphant Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) Bonallack Trophy team will represent their respective countries in the 19th Asian Games which tees-off tomorrow.

Although the golf tournaments in Hangzhou are including professionals for the first time since golf was introduced to the Asiad in 1982, Japan’s Yuta Sugiura and Taichiro Ideriha, Koreans Cho Woo-young and Jang Yu-bin and Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Minh have all been selected for the quadrennial event.

Sugiura, Ideriha, Cho, Jang and Anh Minh all made vital contributions to the Asia-Pacific’s victory against a strong European Golf Association team in the Ryder Cup-style team match play Bonallack Trophy in Spain last month.

It’s a similar story among the women where the field will be headlined by China’s world number one Yin Ruoning.

Also among the 44 females in the starting line up at Westlake International Golf Course from September 28 to October 1 are five players who flew the flag for the APGC in the Patsy Hankins Trophy in Spain – Korean Kim Min-sol, Japan’s Mizuki Hashimoto, Chinese Taipei’s Tiffany Huang Ting-hsuan, Indian Avani Prashanth and Indonesian Elaine Widjaja.

For a number of the competitors in Hangzhou it will be their amateur swansong with Cho and Jang already confirming their intent to turn professional next month.

With the participation of Thai Eila Galitsky, the past three winners of the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific (WAAP) will be in the Hangzhou field. Hashimoto won in 2021 and Huang in 2022.

Also bidding for medal glory in China will be Arianna Lau and Sophie Han, representing Hong Kong, China.

Lau is the reigning APGC Girls’ champion while Han tied for third in this year’s WAAP in Singapore.

In total there will be four golfing gold medals up for grabs next week – men’s and women’s individual and men’s and women’s team.

Among the star names in the starting line-up are Koreans Im Sung-jae and Kim Si-woo, both winners on the PGA Tour.

A powerful Indian team is led by Anirban Lahiri and Shubhankar Sharma, while China hopes rest with Wu Ashun, a European Tour winner, and teenager Ding Wenyi, one of the leading Asians in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

In the showpiece flight for men at 10.30 am will be the trio of Wu, Im and Lahiri.

Fittingly, the first women's group out from the first tee at 6.30 am features world number one Yin alongside Thai pro Patcharajutar Kongkraphan and Rianne Malixi, the talented amateur from the Philippines.