Twenty-five years ago professional tournament golf took its first steps in China and, despite a few stumbles, paved the way to establishing the sport in a country where it was once banned as a "bourgeois pursuit for millionaires".
An unlikely alliance between the China Golf Association and a Swedish carmaker with an eye on an emerging market resulted in a tentative toe being dipped into oriental waters in April 1995 for the first Volvo China Open.
China's first professional golfer, Zhang Lianwei, who had given up his amateur status just a few months before, finished third behind Paraguay's Raul Fretes in a field that contained 1988 US Masters champion Sandy Lyle.
Later that year, millions across the world tuned in to see Davis Love III and Fred Couples lift the 1995 World Cup of Golf for the US at China's newly opened Mission Hills resort.
Zhang and another new pro, Cheng Jun, represented China and finished a monster 45 shots adrift, 27th in a 32-nation field.
But it mattered not. China was on the golfing map and it has stayed there ever since, attracting the game's biggest stars and multi-million dollar prize pots, and nurturing a handful of world-class players.
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Zhang was already 30 in 1995 but these days Chinese golfers start young, sometimes swinging toddler-sized clubs from the moment they can walk. Guan Tianlang became the youngest player to make the cut in the US Masters as a 14-year-old amateur in 2013.
"It's a different era and a different environment for these kids coming through now. I started playing golf at the age of 20," Zhang told AFP.
China's first course had opened only 12 months before Zhang started playing, when Mao Zedong's ban on golf was lifted. Now the country has more than 500.
Zhang won the China Amateur Open three times, but his professional ambitions met a great wall of bureaucracy.
"I had to wait a very long time to turn professional because of procedures with the China Golf Association and the government," said Zhang, the only player to have competed in every Volvo China Open.
It was worth the wait for the pioneering Zhang, who became the first Chinese player to win a European Tour event in 2003, and the first from his country to play the US Masters in 2004.
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- 'Not a usual Monday' -
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A wide-eyed Woods remarked it had been "not a usual Monday". McIlroy was similarly diplomatic: "I wouldn't say it was crazy out there. The word I would use is 'enthusiastic'."
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