Proving Grounds

SHANGHAI, CHINA | Milestones are moments for measuring successes and failures. So as the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship celebrates its 10th anniversary this week, it seems a good time to assess how it has fared since the tournament was first played, at the Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, China, in the fall of 2009.

It also makes sense to use this occasion to assess how a competitive cousin of that event, the Latin America Amateur Championship, has done. After all, its fifth anniversary is coming up in January. And the two tournaments not only share founding fathers, in the Masters Tournament and the R&A, but also the mission of furthering the development of the game in their respective regions, in part through the creation of golf heroes whose triumphs will compel future generations to take up the sport themselves.

One way to calculate how the events are doing in those regards is by analyzing the performance of AAC and LAAC alumni who are now making their livings as tour professionals. And by that gauge, the competit...