A lot has changed for Shanshan Feng over the last couple of years. The now 34-year-old retired from professional golf in 2022 and has been up to quite a bit since her playing days on the LPGA Tour.
She got involved with the Chinese National Team as a coach and attended the 2023 HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore.
Feng is a brand ambassador for numerous companies and travels the world as much as she can when the opportunity arises, recently spending some time in Tibet last summer.
Feng even got married, sharing the happy news on her Instagram page last August on Chinese Valentine’s Day.
But maybe most significantly, the 10-time LPGA Tour winner has recently become a mother.
Feng posted photos of her son on Instagram on April 19 that were taken at the little one’s full moon party, a Chinese tradition that celebrates a newborn after its first month of life.
Motherhood has been a new adventure for Feng, who self-admittedly hasn’t spent much time around children. And it has really gotten her thinking about just how her former LPGA Tour counterparts handle being a mom and a professional athlete, a challenge that she can appreciate a little more now that she has gone from hitting drivers to changing diapers.
“Three years ago, when I decided to retire, I did want to get on a diet and then lose some weight, and then look more pretty and be able to fit in more pretty clothing, and I wanted to find a boyfriend. He became my husband,” Feng explained. “I went from single to being married and from being married to being a mom in one or two years. I think everything happened in a good way, and I'm really happy right now, even though I'm still learning a lot of different stuff because it's just brand new.
“I didn't spend a lot of time with kids. I kind of know that being on Tour, a player having children, that might be a lot of trouble. But now I'm experiencing it, even though I'm not playing anymore, but it's still a lot of trouble. Luckily, my husband and my parents, they're helping a lot, so I think I'll get better.”
Feng’s son won’t know his mother as a professional golfer – that is unless Shanshan decides to come out of retirement at some point – but the rest of the world could never forget Feng’s humor and spirit as she competed around the globe on the LPGA Tour.
Her cow-print pants were famous, and you never knew what the People’s Republic of China native would say next in post-round interviews.
One of her more memorable quotes in recent years came in a Golf Channel interview at the 2021 Chevron Championship when Feng was asked what she had been up to during the COVID-19 pandemic, having not played competitive golf since the end of the 2019 season.
“I didn’t really do anything. Just like boring normal life,” Feng laughed. “After you get up, you think about what you want to eat for breakfast. After breakfast, you think about what you want to eat for lunch. Then, after lunch, you think about what you want to eat for dinner. Just really boring, but at the same time, I really enjoyed it.”
But for all of her goofy antics and despite her bubbly, effervescent personality, Feng was a fierce competitor on the golf course.
She captured 10 LPGA Tour victories in her 15 years as an LPGA Tour member, one of which was a major title, the 2012 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Locust Hill Country Club in Pittsford, N.Y.
A 22-year-old Feng won by two shots that week to capture her first victory on the LPGA Tour, becoming the very first player from China to win on Tour in the organization’s then 63-year history.
“I would say first of all, I’m really, really happy that I won a tournament,” Feng said in her winning press conference. “I still can’t believe it. I think after this win, it’s going to give me a lot more confidence. I believe that I can win again in the future, and hopefully, it’s going to help golf in China because I want to be (Lorena Ochoa) for golf in China. I want to be a model that all the juniors maybe can follow my step and get on the LPGA.”
After winning the Blue Bay LPGA in her home country in 2017, Feng ascended to No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, the first player from China to ever accomplish the feat and a position that she held for 23 weeks until April of the next year.
But it was her performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics that would wind up being the most significant of Feng’s career achievements, an event that solidified her place as one of female golf’s biggest stars and that changed the trajectory of her life in the biggest of ways.
Feng took home the bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, posting a four-day total of 10-under to finish just one shot behind Lydia Ko, who took silver, and six shots behind Inbee Park, who claimed gold for the Republic of Korea.
In golf, major championships and tournament victories are generally how a player is measured, as the tallies in a win column – or the lack thereof – often show a competitor’s capacity to handle the pressure of golf’s biggest moments and their ability to come up clutch when it matters most.
That said, Feng’s 10 victories certainly qualify her LPGA Tour career as a solid one, even more so considering one of those titles came at a major championship. But, Feng doesn’t consider her win at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship to be the highlight of her career.
“A lot of people ask me which one is more important – to win a major or to win the Olympic Games,” Feng explained. “I always said, of course, the Olympic Games because every four years, there's only one Olympic Games. Every year, we have five majors, so in four years, we have 20 chances to win a major, but only one Olympic Games. I always thought winning the Olympic Games, or even just to attempt the Olympic Games, would be the most important thing for me as a golfer. I was very lucky that I could play twice and also get a medal.
“To be involved with the Olympic Games, it was my dream, and that was a dream come true, and I ended up standing on the podium, so that was even more amazing, even though the medal color wasn’t gold. I said we were all gold medalists because the gold medal is the gold medal, and then the silver medal is the light gold medal, and then the bronze medal is actually the rose gold medal.”
Feng was unsure if she would once again qualify for the Olympics in Tokyo, having taken an extended leave of absence during the entirety of the 2020 LPGA Tour season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She returned to professional competition in 2021, ultimately playing well enough to earn a spot in the 60-player field in Japan, something that she postponed her impending retirement to do.
“I decided to play 2021 even though I was 31 already. I knew I was going down. I wasn’t at the peak of my career, but I was still the top-ranked Chinese golfer,” Feng remembered. “I thought that I still had a responsibility to play the Olympic Games. Because I did get the bronze medal in Rio, I wanted to try to get a gold medal before I retired, so I decided to play in the Tokyo Olympics.
“That was my goal for the whole Tokyo Olympics. Even though at the end, the result didn’t come out how I wanted, I still gave 100 percent and didn’t feel regret.”
The People’s Republic of China will be represented at the Paris Olympics by Xiyu Lin and Ruoning Yin, two LPGA Tour athletes who followed in Feng’s footsteps, just as she had hoped young players would after her KPMG victory.
Lin is a standout competitor on Tour, amassing 29 top 10s and making $5,643,448 in career earnings since joining the organization in 2014. She represented China alongside Feng at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, finishing in a tie for ninth in the latter.
Yin became a Rolex First-Time Winner at the 2023 DIO Implant LA Open, joining Feng as just the second Chinese player ever to win on the LPGA Tour. She once again joined Feng’s esteemed company at the 2023 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, capturing her first major title at Baltusrol Golf Club’s Lower Course, fittingly the same major that Feng herself won over a decade earlier.
Yin ascended to No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings in September of that same year, a position she has held for a total of four career weeks, and the 21-year-old became a three-time LPGA Tour champion at this year’s Dow Championship, winning alongside her playing partner and fellow 2022 LPGA Tour rookie Atthaya Thitikul.
The pair lead a contingency of excellent players from the People’s Republic of China who are currently LPGA Tour members, and while Feng can’t take credit for the individual success of every Chinese female professional golfer, she was the catalyst that ignited that spark of inspiration, her goal right from the start of her career.
“I was the first Chinese golfer to stand on the podium,” said Feng. “After I got the medal, of course, I would like more people to see how good Chinese golfers can be, and hopefully, more people will start to join the sport, and that happened after 2016. We could see so many more junior golfers starting to play golf in China. I was very happy about it.”
Feng will get to watch the future she helped create carry the mantle forward for Chinese golf at this year’s Paris Olympics, and even though she might not be able to attend the Games in person, the bronze medalist will be cheering on her fellow countrywomen when the women’s golf competition gets underway on August 7.
“I would really wish that they could complete my dream that I wanted to get a gold medal,” said Feng. “Now, I don't have a chance anymore. But I believe that Chinese players will achieve that, achieve things in the future.”
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