GAILES, SCOTLAND | Yani Tseng, the 37-year-old Taiwanese golfer who won what was a record five majors by the time she was 22, was sitting on her own in the dining room at last week’s Women’s Scottish Open at Dundonald Links.
Do people recognise her after her long spell out of the limelight?
Older folk do, and there are plenty of them around at Royal Lytham & St. Annes for this week’s AIG Women’s Open as they remember the girl who won the 2010 edition of this major by a shot from Australia’s Katherine Hull at nearby Royal Birkdale.
As for the younger tour players, most of them don’t remember her. “Today, it’s me that’s in awe of them,” said a smiling Tseng. “They’re such good competitors. … When I’m playing with them, they make me feel young.” Some of those in their teens and 20s might ask about her background and say a wide-eyed “Cor!” or its equivalent, but that’s about as far as it goes.
Tseng had plenty of friends on tour all those years ago but, after winning what was her fifth and final major, the 2011 Women’s British Open at Carnoustie, things were on the verge of going wrong. And that’s precisely what happened after she had made off with three of the first five LPGA events in 2012.
Just like that, the magic disappeared. At that stage, Yani had no idea why. Today, though, she knows precisely what went amiss and how, for the sake of others, she has her post-golf future mapped out. It’s about creating a sounder relationship between schooling and sport in her homeland.
“If, like me, you were good at golf,” she said, “you only had to go to school in the mornings. It was as if it was just golf, golf, golf.” Also, there would be weeks when she was dispatched to junior events in and beyond Taiwan. As often as not, she would come back with a trophy, only to find herself falling further and further behind at school.
In other words, her Plan B – she had thoughts of working as a kindergarten teacher one day – was no longer on the cards because of her lack of appropriate qualifications. Hardly surprisingly, she has always admired such as Michelle Wie and Rose Zhang for completing their degrees at Stanford University while pursuing their playing careers.
She will tell you that she is grateful for everything she has done in golf and still intends to do, and she’s grateful for being in a position where she will be able to fulfil the schooling and sport project she has in mind.
Yani’s Plan A eventually stopped working. The better she played, the more she struggled to keep going. “I was trying too hard and I wasn’t allowing myself to make mistakes,” she explained. “My thinking was that if I was the No. 1 in the world, I had to play well.”
The mental side of things coincided with injury problems. First, it was her hips, with spur problems so painful that they called for surgery. Her left hip recovered, but not so the right. The surgeon said he was sorry, but she would never be able to compete again. A tearful Yani begged him for a second operation and she had her way.
In 2025, after six years of surgeries and recuperation, there was a flicker of life when she survived a five-for-one playoff in a final qualifier for the U.S. Women’s Open at Erin Hills. And when, in the championship itself, she was only a shot away from making the cut, she told herself, “I’m right there.” All of which was entirely plausible when, with her new brand of left-handed putting helping keep the yips at bay, she went on to win the Taiwan LPGA’s Wistron Ladies Open last October.
In nine LPGA starts this season, Tseng has made the cut in only two, and she opened the AIG Women’s Open with a 6-over-par 77 at Lytham on Thursday.
“This year,” she said, in assessing her ’26 season thus far, “I’m only missing cuts by a little rather than a lot.”
As one who is endeavouring to look at the bright side, she is happy with that.
On the grounds that she believes that most of her problems, including those to do with her hips, have been more mental than anything else, she now arrives at the end of each day asking herself, “What have I done well today. What should I be feeling grateful for?”
She will tell you that she is grateful for everything she has done in golf and still intends to do, and she’s grateful for being in a position where she will be able to fulfil the schooling and sport project she has in mind.
With a little bit of encouragement from old friends and followers, she should find something to be grateful for this week.