Guan Tianlang dreams of being first golfer to score grand slam of majors
Guan Tianlang, set to be youngest player at US Masters, hopes to achieve his boyhood dreams
China’s 14-year-old prodigy Guan Tianlang has set his sights sky-high by aiming to become the first player to claim golf’s legendary “grand slam”: winning all four majors in the same year.
Guan will next month become the youngest golfer to compete in the US Masters – the first of the season’s most prestigious tournaments – when he tees off at Augusta National aged just 14 years, five months and 17 days.
And the Guangzhou schoolboy, who will smash the record set by Italy’s Matteo Manassero in 2010 when he was aged just 16, told reporters that he hopes the Masters will just be the starting-point.
I have a dream since I was a little boy. I wish, one day, I can win all four majors in one year
“I have a dream since I was a little boy,” Guan said in an exclusive interview. “I wish, one day, I can win all four majors in one year.”
Such an achievement would eclipse even Guan’s idol, the 14-time major-winner Tiger Woods, who won all four of golf’s major championships consecutively, but not in the same calendar year, from the US Open in 2000 to the Masters in 2001.
Guan will rub shoulders with Woods at the Masters, and he may come up against his hero again at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, when golf will make its return to the Games.
“It is every athlete’s dream to represent their home country to compete at the Olympics,” Guan said.