Young Guan aims at Masters | The Salt Lake Tribune

Golf • 14-year-old amateur from China is tournament's youngest player ever.

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Augusta, Ga. • Guan Tianlang is in good company this week at Augusta National.

He played a practice round Monday with two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw, then headed out in the afternoon with Tiger Woods. He has a game lined up Tuesday with Tom Watson, an eight-time major champion. On Wednesday, he plans to play the Par 3 Tournament with Nick Faldo, winner of six majors.

Can't he play with someone his own age?

Not at this Masters.

Guan is the 14-year-old from China, the youngest to ever play in the Masters and the youngest player at any major in 148 years. He qualified by winning the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship last fall in Thailand, and now he gets a crack at the best in the game, on one of the most famous golf courses in the world.

Nerves? So far, only a big smile.

"I'm really excited in the morning when I come out on the course and there's many people here," Guan said Monday, conducting his news conference in English with a Chinese translator at his side in case he needed help. He rarely did.

The kid has shown to be special in many ways.

He went wire-to-wire in the Asia Pacific amateur, and he wasn't even rattled on the final hole at Amata Spring Country Club. With a belly putter he had been using for about six months, he calmly rapped in a 5-foot par putt for the one-shot win.

Age seems to have no limits these days in golf. Tiger Woods was 21 when he won the 1997 Masters. Sergio Garcia was 19 when he nearly beat Woods in the PGA Championship two years later. Morgan Pressel was 18 when she won a major championship on the LPGA Tour. Lydia Ko was 15 when she won the Women's Canadian Open last year on the LPGA Tour.

Even so, this is the Masters. Guan is 14, the only player in the field who brought his eighth-grade homework with him to Augusta National.

"I knew he was young," Steve Stricker said Monday. "I didn't know he was the same age as my daughter. Yeah, that's remarkable."

The only player younger than Guan in a major championship was Tom Morris, who was about a month younger in the 1865 British Open. —

The Masters

P Thursday, 1 p.m.

TV • ESPN