Chinese native Yuan Liu finds success as Xinjun Zhang’s caddie

Yuan Liu doesn’t have much time to chat. He’s in a hurry to help out a friend.

Chinese player Bobby Bai had unexpectedly moved into the first alternate position for the Korn Ferry Tour Championship but was without a caddie. So, he called his good pal Liu, who was happy to oblige.

“He wasn’t expecting to play this week,” Liu said. “But I just received word this morning that he’s in the field.”

And now Liu is rushing off to the Jacksonville airport in Florida, looking to catch his flight to Newburgh, Indiana. His wife Zuya Huang is driving him while their eight kilogram dog Barclays is in the back seat.

Life has been kind lately to Liu, who has carved out a nice living these last few years caddying for Chinese golf star Xinjun Zhang.

Last month, the 33-year-old Zhang — with Liu once again on his bag — became the first player from mainland China to qualify for the playoffs of the FedExCup, which is the PGA Tour’s league table.

And though his season ended short of the BMW Championship, Zhang and his team ended the 2019-20 campaign feeling very encouraged about what was to come.

It also gave Liu at least a couple of valuable weeks off, which he ultimately decided to spend on the course with Bai at Victoria National Golf Club.

Because why stop now?

“I was kind of lost after high school and didn’t really know what to do with my life,” Liu said.

“And now here I am caddying on the PGA Tour. I never thought from a conversation at a doctor’s appointment that I would end up here.”

Before we get to that fateful doctor’s visit, let’s first rewind to how Liu wound up here.

He was born in Chengdu but moved to the United States before he was 10 years old, certainly not long enough to establish roots, but plenty of time to learn the language — an asset that one day would be critical to his ascension to life as a PGA Tour caddie

Now living in Orlando, Florida, with his mother Tommie and stepdad Glenn “Spanky” Stafford, Liu got his first taste of golf.

Not only was Stafford a longtime member at Bay Hill Club & Lodge, site of the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational, but his business always had a hospitality tent along the 18th hole when Liu was growing up, giving him ample exposure to the sport.

But it wouldn’t capture his interest. At least not yet.

“I would go watch the tournament a lot, and I did go to golf camps as a kid, but I just never really gravitated to the sport,” Liu said.

“It’s a hard game to pick up, obviously. I did receive some coaching when I was younger, but I never really liked the sport.”

All that changed when Liu — at the time looking to find an outlet with his future still ahead of him —headed to that doctor’s appointment. Only it wasn’t for him, but his good friend Simin Feng, who, in 2015, became just the fourth player from mainland China to earn a LPGA Tour card.

“She needed to get to a doctor’s appointment, so I picked her up and we were talking,” Liu recalled.

“She said I should get into golf and was telling me that with my personality that I would probably be a good fit. I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I just went ahead and studied at the Golf Academy of America there in Orlando, graduated and got a job at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach working for the caddie master.”

Not long after, Feng’s family was offering up another opportunity for Liu. Their friend, Zhang, was competing in Orlando at the Korn Ferry Tour qualifying tournament and needed a bilingual host to help him get around. Zhang, who was still learning English, would require someone to help him check into the hotel and register for the tournament, among other jobs.

“We hung out for a couple days and played golf together,” Liu said.

“I told him that if he made the cut I would come back and watch him on the weekend. He ended up playing great, so we went out and celebrated.

“I remember he kept saying it was hard to get a caddie for the Korn Ferry Tour events in the Bahamas because it’s expensive to go,” he continued.

“I said, ‘heck man, if you need a caddie just hit me up and I’ll be more than happy to go.’”

Zhang would go on to make the cut, and a partnership was officially solidified. Liu has caddied for Zhang since, including through those tough moments when he first competed in America. Though he earned a tour card for 2018, Zhang would soon lose it after making just 12 cuts across 28 starts.

“I was with him for all of that,” Liu said.

“That first year on the Korn Ferry Tour was a really tough year looking back at it. Even though he got his card, we were missing a lot of cuts at one point.

``We would have a bad round and have to go back to the same hotel room together. It was rough. I had a lot of thoughts about quitting many times throughout that year. It was tough, I have to admit.”

But Zhang wasn’t the only one learning on the go.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time, either,” he said, laughing. “I was literally just carrying a bag and getting yardages. I would mess up a lot of yardages, too. That was a tough year. (I’m doing) a lot more now.”

Yes, he is. And Zhang is, too.

Backed by a pair of top-10s in the northern hemisphere autumn and finishes of 10th and 12th, respectively, in July at the Memorial Tournament and 3M Open, Zhang qualified for the FedExCup playoffs for the first time, a special comeback after such trying rookie struggles.

Zhang now finds himself in-between swing coaches entering the 2020-21 season, and his trainer, Chenshuo Zhu, has yet to arrive in the United States this year due to the covid-19 pandemic. That means Liu has more responsibility than ever, if even for a bit. And he’s ready for the challenge.

“We talk a lot about his swing since he doesn’t really have a coach right now,” Liu said. “It’s just me on the range telling him what I see.”

Quite the turnaround for a man who was lost, as Liu likes to put it.

“It’s crazy,” Liu said, almost in disbelief. “It’s just a stroke of luck that I got to where I am.”

Caption: Xinjun Zhang of China and his caddie Yuan Liu (left) wait on the tee at the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, California, last month. Photo credit: Sean M Haffey/Getty Images.