Ji-yai Shin emphasised Asia’s growing dominance over the women’s game by winning the HSBC Champions tournament in Singapore by two strokes over the Australian Katherine Hull.

Shin’s victory may force Carolyn Bivens, the progressive commissioner of the LPGA Tour, to consider staging a major in Asia.

The LPGA has suffered more than most during the current recession and faces losing a large number of sponsors next year. Its contracts with Asian television companies form an increasingly large share of revenue and more and more the LPGA is looking to market itself in the Far East.

Currently 57 of the world’s top 100 women come from Korea, Japan, Taiwan or China. The previous three majors have been won by Yani Tseng of Taiwan and by Inbee Park and Ji-yai Shin of Korea. Only Lorena Ochoa prevented an Asian clean sweep last year.

Bivens’s first significant reaction to the Asian influx was to require the players to learn English and threaten them with suspension if they didn’t comply. The policy was immediately slated and, as Padraig Harrington acutely observed, did it mean that mutes were not allowed to play on the LPGA Tour.

Shin, the winner of last year’s British Women’s Open, is not the most fluent communicator in English, but the 20-year-old is certainly improving. After yesterday’s victory she was asked why Korean women were so good at golf.

She said: “Every time get same question. I think we long time have family to support, the players. So, get more hard mental, and then more training.” Can we conclude then that mentally weak and physically lazy Britain no longer has a player under 30 in the world’s top 100 due to the breakdown of family?

Shin was certainly “more hard mental” in the final round. She birdied her opening four holes on her way to a 66, a round that contained not a single bogey. In contrast Hull, who had a four shot lead, choked badly as she turned for home. Not for nothing is Shin known as the “final round queen” back home in Korea.

She is also one of six Koreans who have been dubbed “the dragon ladies” due to the fact they were born in 1988, the year of the dragon. They have already won two majors between them and they haven’t yet celebrated their 21st birthdays. The times they are a changing and it can’t be long before the LPGA stages its first major in the Far East. feldene