Former champion and Chinese golf’s most famous star player Li Haotong will lead the home charge when the tri-sanctioned Volvo China Open celebrates its 25th anniversary at the Genzon Golf Club in Shenzhen next week.
To be staged from May 2-5, the RMB 20 million event – sanctioned by the European Tour, Asian Tour and China Golf Association – has once again attracted a strong field, which includes a clutch of former winners including Li, Swedish defending champion Alexander Bjork, Asian Tour Order of Merit leader Scott Hend of Australia and the tournament’s only two-time winner Alexander Levy of France.
While Bjork will be looking to successfully defend the maiden European Tour title he won in impressive style 12 months earlier, he faces a challenge rich in quality from players on both Tours as well as the best golfers from the burgeoning Chinese golf landscape.
While all top ten players on the Asian Tour Order of Merit - led by Hend – will all tee it up at the Neil Haworth-designed course, the European Tour will be strongly represented by the likes of the 2011 Volvo China Open champion and Ryder Cup star Nicolas Colsaerts of Belgium, the current No.9 on the Race to Dubai Kurt Kitayama of the USA, and four-time European Tour winner Bernd Wiesberger from Austria, who also won the last time he played the Genzon Golf Club in 2017.
“As the 25th anniversary of the Volvo China Open is without doubt a milestone occasion in the history of China’s National Open Golf Championship, we are excited to see so many world-class players and former winners in the line-up,” said Volvo China Open Board Chairman Sven de Smet.
“With six of our last eight champions in the field – including Alexander Levy who won in 2014 and 2017 – as well as a number of great names whose names are also etched on the trophy, the tournament should be a fitting celebration not only of the tournament itself but also of the development of golf in China.
“Since the Volvo China Open became a European Tour event in 2004, we have seen two home-grown winners in the shape of Wu Ashun and Li Haotong who have subsequently gone on to win five European Tour events between them and helped promote Chinese golf on the global stage. We are delighted to share in that success and welcome them both back for the 2019 tournament.”
This year’s event will be the second Volvo China Open be staged at the Genzon Golf Club. The last time the event took up residence at the venue was for the 20th anniversary in 2014 when Levy shot 19-under-par to beat Tommy Fleetwood by four.
Since then the club has become the first Chinese addition to the European Tour Properties’ world class network of destinations.
As well as enjoying a field rich in players from the top level of golf in Europe, Asia and China, the Volvo China Open will also feature a number of amateur and professional golfers who earned coveted invites after a series of International and Domestic Qualifying events, while 14-year-old Kuang Yang from Chengdu will join the field as the winner of the Volvo China Junior Match Play Championship.
In its 24-year history, the Volvo China Open has been won by 23 different players – only Levy has won it more than once – from 15 different countries.
