High Stakes on Offer as Regional Stars Vie for Asian Games Glory

Kasugai, Aichi, Japan: Stars from the world’s most prominent professional Tours will lock horns with many of the game’s brightest amateur players, all vying for high stakes when the golf tournament at the 20th Asian Games tees-off tomorrow.

Korean PGA Tour standout Tom Kim Joo-hyung and China’s Yin Ruoning, a Major champion and former women’s world number one, are the headline names bidding for medal glory at the Kasugai Country Club’s East Course in Aichi Prefecture from September 30 to October 3.

In what promises to be a week of high emotion and drama, 66 men and 45 women are setting out to claim national glory and a place in annals of the history of the Asiad, a quadrennial gathering that makes heroes and defines careers.

It’s not only gold, silver and bronze medals that are at stake in individual and team tournaments for men and women.

In some cases, lucrative cash prizes are dangled as incentives, while exemption from military service is on the line for Tom Kim and his Korean team-mates Kim Seong-hyeon and Mun Do-yeob should they strike gold.

Intriguing story-lines are everywhere, among them the prospects of Hong Kong’s Taichi Kho and Thailand’s Arpichaya Yubol successfully defending the individual gold medals they secured at the Hangzhou Games in 2023, staged a year later than intended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fresh from his heroics in a losing cause for The International Team at last week’s Presidents Cup in Chicago, Tom Kim is the top-rated player in the men’s field, at 32nd in the Official World Golf Ranking.

He is followed in the standings by Keita Nakajima (96th), fellow-Japanese Kazuki Higa (168th), last year’s Asian Tour Order of Merit champion, Kim Seong-hyeon (185th), China’s Zhou Yanhan (240th) and Ding Wenyi (289th) and Hong Kong’s Kho (294th).

They are joined by four of the top-65 in the men’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) – Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Minh (29th), Thai Pongsapak ‘Fifa’ Laopakdee (30th), Singapore’s Hiroshi Tai (63rd), Japan’s Taishi Moto (64th).

Nakajima (2021), Ding (2024) and Pongsapak (2025) are all past winners of the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC).

In 2021, Nakajima captured the title by defeating Kho in a sudden-death play-off in Dubai. They have been paired alongside Tom Kim in the opening day’s marquee group tomorrow, teeing-off at the first hole at 8.20 am.

A year before his AAC triumph in Gotemba, Ding and Sampson Zheng, one of his team-mates here, both lost out in a three-way play-off at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, won by Australian Jasper Stubbs.

Among the women’s field here are five players from the top-100 in the Rolex Rankings – Yin (sixth), fellow-Chinese Liu Yan (54th), Singapore’s Shannon Tan (59th), Arpichaya (82nd) and Chinese Taipei’s Hsu Wei-ling (84th).

Yin has already scaled the golfing peaks, winning the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in 2023, just the second mainland China player to win a Major, and enjoying a spell as number one in the Rolex Rankings.

This week, Yin is making her third Asian Games appearance and is anxious to improve her record which includes just two team bronze medals.

Other notable starters at the Kasugai Country Club are former world number one and multi-time Major winner Tseng Ya-ni who was a member of the bronze medal-winning Chinese Taipei team in the 2006 Asiad, and Bianca Pagdanganan, who won the individual bronze and was a member of the gold medal-winning Philippines team in 2018.

Also aiming to contend are seven players currently in the top-50 in the women’s WAGR – Korean Yang Yun-seo (ninth), Rianne Malixi of the Philippines (10th), Japan’s Aira Nagasawa (11th), Koreans Park Seo-jin (26th) and Kim Gyu-been (28th), Japan’s Ai Goto (42nd) and Hong Kong’s Arianna Lau (43rd).

Yang is the reigning Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific (WAAP) champion, while Malixi won the 2024 US Women’s Amateur and Goto was a member of the victorious Japanese team at the Queen Sirikit Cup in Indonesia in May when she was edged out by Korean Kim in a play-off for individual honours.

Among those who will be watching on with special interest this week are Rishi Narain and Joanne McKee, who will captain the Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation Bonallack Trophy and Patsy Hankins Trophy teams in January.

With just over three months to go before Narain and McKee bid to retain the titles against the might of Europe’s top amateurs, the Asian Games presents players with a final chance to impress and secure their slots on the team.

On the men’s side, Nguyen Anh Minh, Moto and Tai were part of the winning Bonallack team in the UAE in 2025, while Lau and fellow Hong Kong player Sophie Han, and Japan's Mamika Shinchi contributed to the success in the Patsy Hankins Trophy.