The age of the golfing widow may be nearing an end in Hong Kong as a new breed of Asian women players inspire an increasing number of schoolgirls and women to take up the sport.
The Hong Kong Golf Association has seen a rush of interest from young girls following the success of 14-year-old Michelle Wie, a Hawaiian player of Asian extraction, who last year became the youngest ever winner of the US Women's Amateur Public Links Championship.
More established Asian female stars like Pak Se-ri and Grace Park, of South Korea, were also helping draw more women into the sport, says the association's chief executive, Iain Valentine.
Hundreds of schoolchildren, many of them girls, queued up to try their swings at a golf exhibition attended by 10,000 people at the Convention and Exhibition Centre a fortnight ago.
'Girls are boys were having a go but the surprising thing was that 40 per cent of them were girls, which is really quite unusual,' said Mark Reis, of Central Golf, which organised an indoor range at the show.
'Some were as young as seven or eight. Some of them had absolutely no idea and some of them knew what they were doing. We were totally surprised by the level of interest from schoolgirls, and I think you can attribute that to the success of Wie.'