High School Female Athlete of the Week: Wa Yeung Tong takes no time to showcase talents

Scott Tarnow has coached golf at Newport Harbor High for 19 years.

If he does not subscribe to the philosophy that life is too short, he most certainly will believe that his time coaching Wa Yeung Tong will be too little.

Tarnow first met Tong when she was looking for a class during her freshman year. During that introduction, Tong discovered that Tarnow was the golf coach and asked if she could play.

The kicker in this story is that the girls’ golf season had nearly ended. Tarnow offered the only thing he could. He took her to a golf course to see what she could do.

“She came out the first day, and obviously, she was very coachable right away,” Tarnow said. “She stayed for a couple of hours, and she hit probably 500 balls. She came back the next day and did the same thing.

“That was it. I knew that it was all her, and this was going to be her thing.”

Tong amazed Tarnow from the beginning. The first-time golfer got into the sport midway through her freshman year after trying her hand at a multitude of sports.

Growing up in China, Tong, who also goes by Cathy, said she took up swimming when she was 6 years old. She also played badminton for four years, also trying her hand at basketball and track. She ran the 100- and 200-meter sprints.

“They don’t have the same feeling as golf,” Tong said of the other sports. “I don’t know why, but it feels like golf has become a passion.”

Tong was asked about golf’s nature to put its players on an island. No one plays their ball on the same hole at the exact same moment as another player, leaving the competitors in near-total control of their environment.

“When I play golf, it’s kind of like peace, like really [peaceful],” Tong said. “You don’t need to worry about anything, just focusing on your shot.

“Actually, when you start to play golf, you know that if you don’t focus on that shot, you’ll miss that for sure. It’s kind of just focusing on yourself and not the other people.”

Almost from the beginning, Tong proved herself to be a natural. She often reminds herself not to overthink. When she stepped up to the tee for a 100-yard par three in her first tournament on the Junior Development Tour, she told herself to just “go for it.”

Her pitching wedge sought out the flagstick, and she sunk her tee shot for a hole-in-one.

As her sophomore year progressed, Tong continued to impress. In the Sunset League finals, she finished as the runner-up to Los Alamitos’ Grace Lu, who was the league MVP as a junior last year.

Tong has risen through the ranks, making her way onto the Toyota Tour Cup. In order to qualify for the tour, players had to finish in the top 10% of competitors in lower-level tournaments. Tong did so in a tournament at Menifee Lakes Country Club in January.

“This is my 19th year, and I’ve never seen anyone, man or woman, at any level, pick up the game as fast as she has,” Tarnow said. “It’s not even close.”

In her junior year, Tong’s second with the Newport Harbor golf team, she began the season by producing the medalist performance in each of the Sailors’ first seven matches. Her best score was a two-under-par 33 on the Mesa Linda Course at Costa Mesa Country Club.

Newport Harbor (4-4, 2-0 in the Wave League) defeated Laguna Beach 185-210 on Thursday at Ben Brown’s Golf Course in Laguna Beach. It was the first time that Tong was not the medalist, as Newport Harbor senior captain and two-time first-team all-league performer Nicole Nesbitt shot two-under-par 30.

Tarnow believes that the league title will come down to his team and Edison (10-4, 2-0). The Sailors host the Chargers at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach on Tuesday.

Tong said her driver has served her best, but she recognizes the importance of every club in the bag.

“There’s many different types of grass,” Tong said. “You need to know the slope. When you get into the bunker, there’s maybe a bunker that has a lot of sand, so you need to hit it a little thinner to get out of the bunker.

“Any other sports, it’s just your body or one club. Golf is like 14 clubs, and you need to work on everything.”

Tong said she started playing golf on the recommendation of a family member who thought that the sport could lead to an athletic scholarship for college.

It is a line of thinking that Tarnow and others have heard before.

“It is true that there are opportunities for girls,” Tarnow said. “It’s definitely changed in the last 10 years. It used to be a lot easier to get into golf and to get scholarships. It’s definitely more challenging. You have to be more talented today.”

With that in mind, Tarnow believes that Tong has the makeup to meet her goal. Although golf is a sport that challenges its beginners, Tong has risen above its frustrations. She is personable, and Tarnow says that players on other teams hope to play with her.

“It’s all about her potential,” Tarnow said. “Everyone has a growth curve, a learning curve and a potential curve. I just don’t know how big her curve is, but there is certainly a lot of potential there.

“Cathy is only a junior, so she has all of this year and all of next year before she enters college. She has almost two full years to progress. If she continues progressing, I would imagine that there is definitely going to be a coach that is going to want to take a chance on her.”

Wa Yeung Tong finished as the medalist in each of Newport Harbor High’s first seven matches this season.

(Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer)

Wa Yeung Tong

Born: March 7, 2002

Hometown: Hong Kong, China

Height: 5 feet 6

Weight: 110 pounds

Sport: Golf

Year: Junior

Coach: Scott Tarnow

Favorite food: Vanilla ice cream

Favorite movie: “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”

Favorite athletic moment: Tong was proud to earn a spot in the Toyota Tour Cup. In order to qualify, golfers had to compete in a series of lower tournaments and finish in the top 10% of the field.

Week in review: Tong was the medalist in her team’s 216-277 win over rival Corona del Mar in the Battle of the Bay at Big Canyon Country Club on Sept. 20. The junior finished as the medalist in each of the Sailors’ first seven matches this season.

[email protected]

Twitter: @ProfessorTurner