The China LPGA Tour didn’t go for a monster drive right off the first tee. Instead the tour opted for a solid tee shot down the middle of the fairway, placing itself in a good position for the next shot. This approach has served the tour and its players well as five women who started on the Chinese tour have already graduated to the US LPGA Tour.

Starting in 2008, the tour has come a long way. This season features 20 tournaments with an average field of between 108 and 120 players. Back in 2004, when it began as the Orient Tour, there were only a handful of tournaments and 20 players.

T. K. Pen, owner and chairman of the China LPGA Tour, says growth has been gradual and that the tour, like a baby, needs to learn to walk before it can run.

“No one was doing women’s golf so I thought it was a niche, a place where I could really do something for China and Chinese people,” he says. “I’m the only one qualified to have a tour because I’m the only chain golf course developer. So I could have a tournament at one of my golf courses say every month. You run 12-13 tournaments throughout the year and you have a tour ... So I talked to the state sports bureau. They were supportive because no one was doing this.”

Pen says they basically started from scratch, as there were no professional women’s players in China back in 2004.

“We had to get all the women who were golf instructors and I told them, ‘You are the new Chinese pros.’ That’s how I got started. We started with like 20 something players,” he says.

Now the China LPGA Tour holds co-sanctioned events with its big sisters like the Korean LPGA, Ladies European Tour, the US LPGA and Australian Ladies Professional Golf. Co-sanctioned tournaments are beneficial in several ways. The fields in co-sanctioned events are stronger as they include players from both tours, thus giving Chinese golfers a chance to face tougher opponents. Since the fields are stronger and deeper, more world ranking points are available in co-sanctioned tournaments. Thus, if Chinese players do well they have a chance to gain precious points, which may help them to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro or to move onto a stronger tour and a chance at more prize money.

By 2006, the Orient Tour organized co-sanctioned events with the KLPGA and in 2008 added two tournaments with the LET. Pen says he signed a contract with the national sports bureau to convert the Orient Tour into the China LPGA Tour in 2008, when talk began about golf becoming an Olympic sport. Now it’s an international tour with players mainly from the Chinese mainland, Chinese Taipei, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia although players from around the world will compete in the co-sanctioned events.

Feng Shanshan, Lin Xiyu, Feng Simin, Yueer Cindy Feng and Yan Jing have all earned their stripes on the China tour and now play mainly in the United States. Feng Shanshan leads the way with four career US LPGA victories, including the first major by a Chinese player at the LPGA Championship in 2012.

With his star players going on to bigger and better things, Pen takes a philosophical approach and doesn’t see it as a bad thing.

“If the good players stay in China, yes, that makes us look good,” says the 47-year-old Taiwan native. “But at the same time the newcomers may be afraid to come up because they may think, ‘I will never win tournaments so why should I come up.’ But when they (the best players) leave and go to the Japan tour or the US tour it leaves more space for newcomers. So in that sense it’s good for China to develop new players.

“You can look at things in a positive way or negative way … I would imagine five years, 10 years down the road when we have thousands of Chinese players then we will also have bigger purse tournaments. When you have more prize money then all the good players will come back. So we need to focus on the fundamentals and focus on creating stories about our players so a Chinese audience wants to watch. That’s what we should be doing instead of complaining about our players going elsewhere.”

Players who go abroad still support the China tour when their schedules allow, returning for co-sanctioned events such as the China Ladies Open or at the end of the season for a few tournaments. And aside from opening up places for newcomers, athletes like Feng Shanshan and Lin provide inspiration for the next generation of golfers.

Pen also says that the bigger issue at this stage is not losing a few players, but developing more players. The CLPGA chairman says golf isn’t like tennis where one top player can make a massive difference and win numerous events each year.

“Golf is a sport of statistics,” he says. “You can’t really rely on that one person.” This is another way of saying golf is fickle and just because a player wins a few events one year doesn’t mean she or he will win any the following season. Thus creating a large pool of players capable of winning offers the best chance of success going forward.

“I look at it long term. We don’t have enough players … We started with 20 something players and now we have about 250,” says the owner of 13 golf courses. “But that’s not enough. South Korea has almost 3,000 players. When you have thousands of players then you can have hundreds of internationally competitive players (South Korea has 11 women ranked in the top 20 on the US LPGA Tour this year). If you have hundreds of players than you have only 20 international players. We desperately need to have more players in China.”

As for the future, Pen is talking to the China Golf Association about creating another tier of tournaments with the idea of generating more grass-roots support for the sport and thus more players.

He says the China LPGA Tour’s 20 events are not enough to split into two levels. He believes traveling costs prevent young pros from entering tournaments around the country. It’s essentially a gamble whether they can play well enough to at least cover their costs.

“The idea is about creating more local tournaments. So if they have only 20 or 30 players in that area then we can make the purse smaller,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be a 1-million yuan tournament. We could make it a 100,000-yuan tournament and that would be good enough. So if 20-30 players sign up for it that’s good. It means they can all win something. It’s something I want to create, but it’s still being discussed.”

The China LPGA Tour is still in its infancy, somewhere on the front nine with a couple of birdies and several pars on the scorecard. The tour is well positioned, now it needs to remember there are numerous bunkers and other hazards on a golf course.

Just take it one shot at a time to fire a hot score in the 60s.