SAN FRANCISCO _ The morning after President Donald Trump, an avid golfer, signed an executive order banning the popular Chinese app WeChat because it "continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States," an unassuming, affable Chinese man shot a bogey-free 65 to lead the PGA Championship at the tournament's midpoint ... while strolling down the fairways of TPC Harding Park wearing a white hat with WeChat in bright, green lettering across the front.
You can't make this stuff up.
Trump already says he won't watch football and other pro sports if players kneel during the national anthem. Maybe he'll add golf to the list, as painful as that would be, owning or operating 17 golf properties worldwide and visiting courses 282 times during his presidency according to one accounting.
Not because golfers kneel and squat a lot (to read greens or stick a tee in the ground).
Because of Li Haotong.
He turned 25 on Monday, has predominantly played on Asian tours and the occasional European event, has no top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour, is No. 114 in the world rankings, owns a home in Rancho Cucamonga, speaks passable English and is probably best known for the viral video of his mother rolling up her pants and wading into a murky pond at a tournament in France to fish out a putter he jettisoned after an untimely bogey. (It was broken and she tossed it back.)
He's putted better this week, holing 33 of 36 inside 15 feet on Harding Park's bentgrass greens. He shot 3-under 67 in Thursday's opening round in the afternoon, when conditions were several strokes harder, and followed that with a 31 on the front nine on a cloudless, windless Friday morning. He spent much of the afternoon on the practice range, a lonesome figure in the fog, smacking ball after ball, oblivious to the saber-rattling between superpowers.
"I've got no expectation actually," Li said, "because you know, last few months, stay at home doing nothing. I just want to (be) out here, have fun."
On trying to become the first Chinese man to win a major: "Well, still got two rounds left. Long way to go. Just want to play my best. If it happens, it happens."
On the difference in his game this week: "Nothing really. Just try to play golf."
On Trump's executive order shutting down WeChat in the United States: "I don't know. Who knows?"
Trump banned another Chinese mobile app, TikTok, but it could escape the sanctions set to begin in 45 days if bought by a U.S. company like Microsoft, as some have speculated.
WeChat is owned by TenCent Holdings, a Chinese conglomerate that's also big in online video games. It's a web platform used by an estimated 1.2 billion people, mostly in China, to do everything from texting friends to buying groceries. Since other messaging apps are blocked by China's Great Internet Firewall, WeChat is the only free means of communication between Chinese in the States and family back home.
Like, well, Li.
He signed an endorsement deal with WeChat shortly before the 2018 Masters, a press release explains, "as part of a drive to introduce its brand values to overseas consumers through the popular sport."
The guy in the WeChat hat may or may not go away this weekend as wind, and nerves, stiffen. He shot a 63 in the final round of the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in 2017 to sneak into third. He also missed the cut at Memorial last month and tied for 75th in Memphis last week, his only two starts since his post-pandemic return from China.
Asked how he'll approach the final two rounds, Li shrugged and said: "Well, I don't even know what I'm going to do. Just play golf."
But the broader message, lost in the kerfuffle over WeChat and a pack of big names stalking him on the leaderboard (Jason Day, Tommy Fleetwood, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Paul Casey, Xander Schauffele, Justin Rose), is that Chinese golfers probably aren't going away. Friday at Harding Park was more about arrival than departure.
Scotland likes to claim invention of the sport in the 15th century, but Chinese scholars will tell you people were playing chuiwan, a similar stick and ball game, during the Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago.
Whatever its origin, golf was banned by Mao Zedong in 1949 because he considered it "a sport of millionaires" and too bourgeois for his proletariat inclinations. It wasn't until 1984 that another course was built, until 1995 that China hosted an international tournament, until 2004 that it had a regularly scheduled tour event. The PGA Tour Series-China didn't begin until 2014.
But China also has this on its side: math.
Its population is 1.4 billion, or roughly one in five people on the planet. Mission Hills Golf Club outside Shenzhen has 12 courses _ 216 holes _ designed by some of the biggest names in the sport: Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Nick Faldo, Pete Dye. Mission Hills has another complex on Hainan island with 10 more courses. Between them, they serve 25,000 junior golfers and 50 annual youth tournaments.
If they're not developing at mega-complexes in China with multiple driving ranges and lights to play all night, their wealthy parents are sending them to elite golf academies in San Diego and elsewhere across the United States.
One friend who works in junior golf put it this way: "There's an army of them."
In 2013, 14-year-old Guan Tianlang became the youngest person to play in the Masters and make the cut at a major.
Last summer, Xihuan Chang won the 9-10 boys division at the Junior World Championships at Shadowridge Golf Club in Vista _ by seven strokes.
Chinese women have already won an LPGA Championship (Shanshan Feng in 2012). Last summer, Bo Jin reached the final match of the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship and Lei Ye won the U.S. Girls Junior Championship.
In 2017, in the days before Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, a "Golf Ball Diplomacy" team match was arranged between Chinese and American youths at nearby Trump International Golf Club. Team China won.
"I think in the future," the man in the WeChat hat was saying Friday, "there will be many Chinese coming out on Tour. For sure."
They just might not be able to message their family back home after they win.
