Asian Majority

Tiger Woods brought back the golf tour to the Washington DC area, and in this inaugural tournament Korean golfer KJ Choi won it all. Although it would be interesting enough to delve into Tiger’s lineage, we’ll save that for another occasion. Congrats KJ.

KJ was born in South Korea and after establishing a solid career in the Asian tour, he became the first Korean to earn a PGA Tour card in 1999. In 2002, he also became the first Korean to win on the PGA Tour at the Compaq Classic of New Orleans. He has had other wins before this most recent one, the AT&T National. He is now in the top 10 of the world ranking.

Interestingly, he actually was a competitive power lifter before he started golfing and was able to squat 350 pounds as a 95 pound 13 year old teenager.

Korean women are doing quite strongly in the LPGA so look for an upcoming post on that.

This is old news, but I still find it relatively unknown news even among my friends. In addition, I love sports, and this also breaks down the stereotype that Asians aren’t athletic. Any person who isn’t ignorant should realize this, but there still is a lot of ignorance out there.

Liu Xiang took the gold in the Athens Olympic Games, and his most recent major accomplishment is to set a new world record at the Super Grand Prix in Lausanne on July 11, 2006 with a time of 12.88 seconds. Here is a video of the event:

Liu was born in Shanghai on July 13, 1983, and his official site is here: http://liuxiang.sports.cn/english/index.html

The world is becoming a smaller place with Asians penetrating the top levels of sports in baseball, basketball, and more. I’m excited to see more coverage. This site isn’t going to be about Asians in sports, but it will definitely be a component of it. Look for more profiles later.