Three Major Winners & Ireland’s Brian O’Donovan Head This Week’s Hong Kong Open.

6 months ago by Comments Off on Three Major Winners & Ireland’s Brian O’Donovan Head This Week’s Hong Kong Open.

Major winners Graeme McDowell, Patrick Reed and Aussie Cameron Smith enjoy star billing in this week’s 62nd edition of the prestigious Hong Kong Open.

Also in the field is Ireland’s Brian O’Donovan.

Of course, McDowell, Reed and Smith need no introduction and with the trio assured to draw huge interest over the four days starting this Thursday at the famed Hong Kong Golf Club course in suburban Fanling.

McDowell’s no stranger to the course, albeit it has been 14-years since he finished T18th in the 2009 Hong Kong Open while G Mac teed-up two years earlier in 2007 posting four rounds in the 60s on route to sixth place.

As for Reed and Smith, it will be a first appearance in the Asian Tour event, and also in a tournament won by some of the greats of the game including: Five-time Open winner Peter Thomson who also won just as many Hong Kong Opens, fellow Aussie and fellow Open winner Kel Nagle, US Open champion Orville Moody, double Open winner Greg Norman (Also a two-time Hong Kong winner), Ian Woosnam, Bernhard Langer, Tom Watson, Jose Maria Olazabal, fellow Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez (Three Hong Kong wins), Ian Poulter, Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose.

Aussie Wade Ormsby is defending champion having won the event in 2017 as a joint Asian Tour and European Tour event, and then again in 2020, and when last played due to then Covid restrictions and with that year being purely under the Asian Tour banner.

O’Donovan takes his place in the field thanks to a tournament invitation, and having just taken over the role in July this year as the Head Professional among a big team of teaching professionals at this week’s famed Hong Kong host course.

Prior to taking-up the post the now 35-year-old O’Donovan had been Lead Instructor for just over four years at the PGA of America Golf Academy at the much-acclaimed Mission Hills club at Shenzhen.

O’Donovan grew-up in Bandon in County Cork and worked as a trainee professional from May 2010 to May 2013 under Stephen Hayes at the Douglas Golf Club in Cork. Then after qualifying as a full PGA Professional at the University of Birmingham he got onto social media seeking a role to suit his new qualification, and then to cut a long story short, he landed himself a job working at Mission Hills.

“The question people ask me the most is how I’ve ended up here in Mission Hills”, he said some years ago in an interview with ‘Joe’, a website run by Ireland’s Joe Harrington. “I actually just wanted to do something different. I’d heard of a few western guys coming over here so I looked into it.

“I did some interviews on Skype, they offered me the opportunity and I took it. Simple as that.”

Ireland’s Brian O’Donovan (Front row in the middle) with the PGA Tour of China class of 2018. (Photo – PGA Tour)

Not surprising that O’Donovan singled out the biggest issue for him was getting a grasp of the Chinese language, as he also explained to ‘Joe’.

“The language was a huge challenge,” he said also to Joe some years back. “When I first arrived I’d no idea what was being said. If there were two Chinese people walking down the street in Dublin or Cork and you overhear them, it sounds like noise. That’s what it was like for a while.

“I’m getting some lessons from a girl in the office, but the problem is that one word has four different meanings depending on the tone you use.

“It was so confusing but I’m getting there now, though, I’m nowhere near, where I want to be, but I can hold a conversation to a decent level.”

He worked as a golf instructor at Mission Hills for five years to the end of 2018 before commencing 2019 at Head Instructor.

A highlight of O’Donovan’s career was earning a full 2018 Tour card on the now defunct PGA China Tour, contesting 14 events and making the cut in five and with a best finish of one top-25, and ending his only season as a PGA Tour accredited pro with earnings of $US 43,694.

O’Donovan teamed with his father Donie, and each a member of the Bandon Golf Club team that won the 2010 Irish Senior Cup at Castlebar.

And another proud golfing high was in June 2015 when he shot a score of 59 (-13) on the Annika Course at Mission Hills.



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