Former beauty queen seeks to establish new Hong Kong Tour

Olivia Cheng, a former Miss Hong Kong and five times Hong Kong Amateur champion, is not prepared to give up competitive golf. This morning she teed off in the Macau Ladies Open and is hoping for a good finish.

However, winning the Macau Ladies Open title is not her number one priority. Ms Cheng, 46, is currently looking into the feasability of starting up a new Tour, which she hopes to name the Hong Kong Ladies Professional Golf Tour. A firm decision is yet to be taken, but she is doing her homework to see if the project is viable.

She hopes to finalise the details and make a formal announcement around the middle of the year, if things work out well.

Ms Cheng, who won the Miss Hong Kong title in 1979, went on to become a film actress in the 1980s. Despite only taking up golf in 1991, in a very short time she has added numerous amateur titles to her name, including two remarkable strings of five successive victories in the Macau Amateur Open (1994-98) and the Hong Kong Amateur Championship (1996-2000). In 2000 she became a Certified Teaching Professional of the United States Golf Teaching Federation (USGTF) and a member of the Hong Kong LPGA.

She is proud to be the founder and president of the Chinese Lady Golfers Association that she established in Hong Kong in 1993. It now has around 500 members, including junior boys and girls. "We also have associate members from mainland China," she said in an interview at the Macau Ladies Open.

The idea of a new Tour, according to Ms Cheng, is to provide more experience for lady professional golfers in Hong Kong. "So I thought it would be a wise idea if I establish a professional Tour to help our lady professional players," she said.

"If my plans materialise then we are thinking of having at least six events per calendar year, mainly for Hong Kong golfers to hone their skills through a competitive avenue. The other purpose is to establish a ranking list to identify players for purposes of multi-sport events like the Asian Games and so forth," she added.

According to Ms Cheng, a lot of her members are turning professional but find that there is a dearth of professional golf competitions in Hong Kong for the ladies to enrich their playing skills.

"Primarily, our aim is to have a base golf club to support our activities and hold our proposed tournaments. I've met up with the proprietor of Discovery Bay, Mr. Victor Cha, and suggested that our activities and development programmes be based at Discovery Bay Golf Club. He was very receptive to our suggestions but gave no firm commitment yet," she said.

Ms Cheng, who has her businessman husband Jeffrey Yu on the bag at the Macau Ladies Open, said that for administrative purposes the Tour would not face any problem, as the Chinese Lady Golfers Association has its own premises.

She hopes that her idea will not turn out to be a utopian dream. "Honestly, to manage this Tour needs a lot of time and effort and more importantly money. On this note I will make an appeal to Government Administrative Office of Hong Kong to support our actions to not only uplift the standard of the Hong Kong lady professionals but also to boost sports tourism and make Hong Kong a choice destination for hosting golf competitions," she said.

She added that they are also looking at large corporations, private and the business entities to come forward and lend their support by sponsoring the golf tournaments.

January 24, 2007

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