LPGA experience helps teen pocket junior title

Playing alongside some of the world's best-known golfers helped 13-year-old Yang Jiaxin defeat rivals up to five years her senior at the HSBC National Junior Championship in Shanghai.

Yang, whose given names translate as excellent (jia) and happy (xin), was both of those on a wet, miserable day at the Sino-Bay Country Sports Club, beating 15-year-old China national team member Xiao Yi by three strokes to claim her first win in Group A, open to girls aged 15-17.

Afterwards the Beijing-based student of English teaching pro James Slade explained that it was playing exhibition holes alongside Christie Kerr, South Koreans Jang Jeong, Lee Seon-hwa, and China's Feng Shanshan at the previous week's Grand China Air LPGA event that gave her the self-belief to enter and win in the senior age group.