At just 19, Haotong Li was carrying the hopes of Chinese golf on his shoulders. He was the country’s highest-ranked player, a young winner on home circuits, and a name the local media followed very closely. That spotlight certainly gets heavy when results stop coming, and they did, during a heartbreaking playoff defeat. The mounting attention left him under real strain as a youngster. Then, Li recalls, everything changed in 2016. Years later, he sat down with George Harper Jr. on the DP World Tour podcast to share how he handled that pressure and turned his career around.
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Before that turning point, he had a fair share of struggles that drew heavy criticism from the media.
“2015 was my first year playing on Web.com. I earned it from, like, PGA Tour. I played quite decently, just didn’t close out well. I had the lead going into Sunday three times and didn’t finish well. I kept my card, finished, like, 49th, and played the first of four events in 2016, the South America event in Web.com. I made a cut. Nothing finished better than top 30th,” Li said on the show.
“I was just stressed and went back to Shenzhen, which was the week before the Volvo China [Open], one of the co-sanctioned events. I finished, like, lost the playoff the year before, and I was breaking umbrellas and misbehaving on the course. Everyone’s like, in China, the media, everyone’s like throwing it at me. I was 19, like, 20 years old. I was so stressed.”
The struggles Li shared here came before his first DP World Tour win, and there is context behind them. Li turned professional in 2011 and exploded onto the scene in 2014 as one of the popular names, even topping the PGA Tour China Order of Merit to earn Web.com status. But then in April 2015, aged 19, he took the inaugural Shenzhen International deep into a playoff before losing it on the last hole. Although he kept his Web.com card for 2016, finishing 49th on the money list was a big setback. As a teenager in that position, he drew constant attention and criticism in China’s golf scene.
Then came 2016, and he returned to Shenzhen International. Unfortunately, he missed the cut, which piled even more pressure on him. However, the criticism took a turn a week later, when he played the 2016 Volvo China Open and won his first DP World Tour title.
Starting the final round at Topwin Golf and Country Club two shots behind Felipe Aguilar and Lucas Bjerregaard, Li produced a bogey-free 64 with eight birdies, the last of them on the 17th. He was so absorbed in his play that he learned only of his three-shot lead on the 18th fairway when his caddie told him to lay up and take par. At 20 years, 272 days, he became the tournament’s youngest champion, finishing 22 under. Winning in front of a home crowd a year after a stressful season put him firmly in the mix for that summer’s Olympic Games.
Naturally, the win shifted the media narrative.
“The start of this year has given me a lot of hard times,” he said that day. “I just tried to relax myself and I’m really happy to hold the trophy here.”
That win did more than ease the pressure, and even now, looking back, Li is clear about what it meant to him.
“Everyone started being like, ‘Oh, Haotong, you’re actually very good.’… Definitely changed my life. Since that week, after I won that, [it’s been] pretty much like play from Europe till now.”
The career trajectory bears that out. He finished third at the 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale, beat Rory McIlroy by a shot to win the 2018 Dubai Desert Classic, and then played the 2019 Presidents Cup.
That said, his career has not moved in a straight line, and Li has been open about his struggles.
This June, for instance, he was in a slump on the PGA Tour, but he credited his psychologist with a simple tool for times when he is under pressure or stress. He says he uses the idea of a “bad Haotong.” Whenever that character shows up, Li tells him to go away.
That candor and positivity are a big reason why fans love him. Li sees himself as a role model for young Chinese golfers and tries not to let expectations weigh on him too much. He is now regarded as one of golf’s most quotable players and a favorite among his peers.