What actually happened
The title implies that a women’s major golf championship was held in Asia and that one woman won it first. To the best of available knowledge, women’s majors have rarely if ever been played in Asia, so the milestone as worded is doubtful and no first winner is named here. It is also clear that nothing of the kind happened in 1967.
The real and well-documented story is different. Asian women became prominent in the sport mainly by travelling to the United States to play the LPGA tour, and by winning the existing majors there. The best-known early example is Chako Higuchi of Japan, who won the LPGA Championship in 1977. That victory was in the United States, and it is generally described as the first major title for a Japanese woman.
Golf in Asia before the modern boom
Golf reached Asia mainly through British and American influence. Clubs appeared in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan from the late nineteenth century onward, often for expatriate communities. Japan developed an especially large golfing culture in the twentieth century, with many private clubs and, later, a thriving driving-range and corporate-membership scene.
Women played at these clubs from early on, although mostly in a restricted or secondary role. National amateur championships for women were established in several countries. Professional opportunities for women remained scarce for a long time, and in 1967 the leading players in the sport were American, with the LPGA tour as the centre of the professional game.
1967 in Asia
In 1967 Asia was in the news for reasons well removed from golf. The Cultural Revolution was under way in China, and unrest reached Hong Kong that year in what is now remembered as the Hong Kong riots. The war in Vietnam dominated much of the region’s politics. Japan, by contrast, was in a period of rapid economic growth, a transformation that had been symbolised by the Tokaido Shinkansen high-speed railway and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
None of that had a direct bearing on women’s major championships, and none were held in Asia that year. Asian women golfers played in national and regional competitions, but the major titles were decided elsewhere.
Chako Higuchi and the first breakthrough
Chako Higuchi was a leading Japanese player in the 1970s who competed on the LPGA tour and in Japan. Her 1977 LPGA Championship win opened a door, and it showed that players from outside the United States and Europe could win at the highest level. Records of early Asian participation on the LPGA tour are patchy, and this article does not try to rank other early players, since a mistake in a long list would do more harm than leaving it out.
Japan later built a strong domestic professional women’s tour, the Japan LPGA, and many of its players have had success both at home and abroad.
The Korean wave and beyond
The next major shift came in the late 1990s. Se Ri Pak of South Korea won two majors in 1998, the LPGA Championship and the US Women’s Open, and her success is often credited with inspiring a generation of Korean girls to take up the sport. In the years that followed, Korean women became a dominant presence on the LPGA tour, and the country developed a deep pipeline of junior players and a busy domestic tour.
Other Asian countries followed. Taiwan, Thailand, China and Japan have all produced players who have won on the world’s major tours, and the representation of Asian players in the top rankings has grown considerably since the 1980s. In tennis the equivalent moment came when Li Na became an Asian Grand Slam singles champion, and golf had a number of earlier breakthroughs of this kind. The details of who won what and when are best checked against the LPGA’s own records, which list every champion of each major.
Events in Asia
Asia now hosts a number of professional women’s events, including stops on the LPGA tour and on regional tours. Some are co-sanctioned by several organisations and some change names or sponsors from year to year. These are significant tournaments, but they have not been among the recognised majors, which remain in the United States, Britain and France. It would be wrong to describe any of them as a major on the strength of its prize money or television coverage alone.
Summary of the real timeline
- The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: golf clubs founded across Asia for expatriate and then local players.
- 1967: no women’s major in Asia, and no Asian-based milestone of this kind.
- 1977: Chako Higuchi of Japan wins the LPGA Championship in the United States.
- 1998: Se Ri Pak wins two majors and helps start a wave of Korean success.
The title’s premise is therefore best treated as a prompt rather than as a fact. The accurate history of Asian women golfers is a story of players leaving home to win in the established majors, and then building strong tours and training systems back home.