Hongkonger set for next step on golf journey after suffering life-altering taekwondo injury

Coco Tsoi Lai-wing will reach a significant staging post on her remarkable and uplifting golf journey next week, eight years after suffering a life-altering injury in preparation for an international taekwondo competition. Poised for her overseas debut in the Glico Paragolf Championship in Japan, Hongkonger Tsoi “stubbornly” continued to compete in the combat sport during the roughly two years she waited for a definitive diagnosis; a period when “I knew I had some limitations, but I didn’t want to accept or admit them”. The numb foot that resulted from an uncontrolled plantar flexion after she was kicked in the right leg was determined to be a symptom of ataxia – a neurological condition that affects walking, coordination and balance. The owner of a master’s degree in sports medicine and health science, Tsoi “knew what to expect” after she discovered the news. “I never thought, ‘Why me?’,” said Tsoi, who “felt a bit lost” without competitive sport. “I was still exercising but I don’t know why people would do that without competition. I decided I wanted a new sport to get meaning back in my life.” A chief MRI physicist during the day, the 30-year-old Tsoi decided golf would “act as rehab and a scientific framework to reclaim my body”, despite never having picked up a club. It is a measure of her commitment that to save money for equipment, Tsoi spent around three years going to bed early so she could skip her evening meal. “I never buy unnecessary things; if we have something we like and want to develop, we need to sacrifice something,” she said. The brace she wears on her shorter right leg was the deciding factor in the 19.5-handicapper playing right-handed, given it requires a dominant left-sided stance. “For the first two years I made no progress,” Tsoi said. “Until then, my path in life had been very smooth; when I learned something new, I could grab the main point very quickly. I’d had no real setbacks until I started to play golf.” Tsoi credits her coach and mentor, Jerry Chan, with “giving me a new perspective on sports and life, and how to stay positive during difficult times”. “We had a very big breakthrough after he told me I needed to admit I have some limitations,” she said. The mental reset allowed Tsoi to “focus on making good use of the abilities I have”; her acutely analytical mind, resilience and perseverance in particular. Chan said: “When I think of the toughness she’s shown, I can’t stop crying. “She’s like a child to me and it feels as if she’s off to graduation [in Japan].” Tsoi describes golf as “physical, emotional and mental therapy”, practising three times a week around her job and pursuing a statistics and data science master’s from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last year, Polytechnic University, where she gained an environmental management and engineering master’s, and a degree in engineering physics, awarded her their Outstanding PolyU Young Alumni Award in Professional Achievement of the Department of Applied Physics. “I keep studying because it’s fun,” Tsoi said. “After work I have time for other activities, so that’s my leisure. People have different definitions of leisure time. “I never miss golf – because I was an athlete for so long, I know what I need to do instead of focusing on how I feel.” As a child, Tsoi’s parents “let me choose what I wanted to do, but I had to pay for everything myself to learn about responsibility”. She was a team champion from the USFHK Taekwondo Competition and won multiple medals from tournaments abroad. “Whatever I achieved, it wasn’t luck; it came from my efforts and sacrifice,” she said. Still, Tsoi feels that more broadly “there is a lack of focus on sports in Hong Kong”, and insufficient attention paid to parasports. “The Paralympics had about a quarter of the coverage of the Olympics, and the people commentating weren’t familiar with the disciplines, so the audience didn’t learn anything about them,” she said. Along with the chance to collect world ranking points, Tsoi is viewing the Golf for Disabled Tour tournament in Hyogo, on April 1 and 2, as an opportunity to shine a light on parasports in the city. “We need to focus on what the athletes have instead of what they don’t,” said Tsoi, who competes in the Standing 1 category for players with impaired static standing balance. “We can’t compare with other people and feel sad about what we don’t have. The most important moment for me every day is when I wake up and have the chance to get better.”

Hongkonger set for next step on golf journey after suffering life-altering taekwondo injury

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Coco Tsoi, who lives with ataxia, is poised to make her overseas debut in the Glico Paragolf Championship in Japan next week

Coco Tsoi, who lives with ataxia, is poised to make her overseas debut in the Glico Paragolf Championship in Japan next week