KELLY TAN
Writer by Koyyi Chin / Photo by Rayson Lo
Having kept her nose to the grindstone for over 15 years, Kelly Tan steps up to the plate once more as the nation’s number one female pro golfer and talks about the realities of being—and staying at the top
Malaysia's No.1 Female Pro Golfer Kelly Tan Aims High
Life as a professional golfer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, even if you are one of the nation’s top ranking players. To play golf professionally is as much an endurance sport as it is an exercise in patience—a trait which Kelly Tan has in spades after experiencing her fair share of trials along her prolific golfing career.
Unbeknownst to the general public, whose knowledge of golf is commonly limited to broadcast television, Tan explains that contrary to the popular belief where golfers are perceived as high-earning individuals who travelled abroad to compete in scenic courses, the reality is far from glamorous.
She recalled an incident in September last year when she had to rush to Portland from Seattle in a car after her flight to was cancelled at the last minute due to weather hazards caused by the forest fire nearby. The drive was three hours long and there were only six hours left before the LPGA-operated Covid-19 centre closed. Her equally harried travel companions were then-boyfriend-now-fiancé, Dustin Lattery, and Paula Hong, an LPGA tour media official.
Tan remembers Hong’s awe afterwards, then waved it away, saying that a situation like this happens "five times a year, give or take”.
“If you played well and ranked top eight in the LPGA, sure, you get all the financial benefits that come with it,” Tan says. “But for the rest of us, especially when you’re in an individual sport like golf, you’re pretty self-reliant when it comes to funding your own tournaments, travel expenses and training—it’s a daily grind that doesn’t stop even during our downtime because we’re constantly looking for sponsorships. The money we get from tournaments isn’t enough because we still need to pay that entrance fee and actually travel there to compete."
She adds: "What boggles the mind is that despite us representing the country in such an internationally recognised sport, no one recognises the talents we have at home. And while I know we need people to pave the way to prove that our work is worth investing in, if there’s no support for the individual who’s climbed their way up to the top, how are the ones who have barely just started their careers ever going to grow in the sport?”
One of her lowest moments, Tan recalls, was when a major sponsor discontinued their contract in 2017, despite the four years of working her way up the LPGA ladder. After earning a spot in the 2014 LPGA Tour with a tied-13th in the 2013 final qualifying tournament, the pro golfer lost her LPGA status in that very same year.
“I was waking up every day feeling defeated,” Tan reveals. “Thoughts like, ‘what am I doing all of this for when nobody believes in me’ or moving on to get a ‘real’ job flashed through my mind—nothing was going right and for the whole of 2018, I’d only played five to six LPGA events, which didn’t bode well for me. It was only when I finished with a tied-20 at the LPGA Q-Series and the Symetra Tour in 2019 that I finally picked myself up.’”
Twenty-twenty has been rather good to her, leaping from No. 417 at the beginning of the year to No. 151 in the Women’s World Golf Ranking before the year ends. She was tied-ninth at the Marathon Classic, tied-11th at the LPGA Drive On Championship and tied-37th at the ANA Inspiration. Despite a stellar professional streak, what's more during the pandemic era, Tan remains modest.
“At the end of the day, even if you’re playing against everyone else, it’s you against the course as well as yourself. The goal is to win, of course, but are you looking to better your score as well as yourself from the past? Or are you comparing yourself to others?”
