This story about Mr Yang even mentions Vijay Singh elsewhere:
“…to become the first Asian-born player to win a men’s major championship. …
Makes you wonder if Phil Mickelson ever tried that. Or Ernie Els. Or Vijay Singh.”
Mr Singh was born in Fiji, and although he is relatively estranged from there, I’m still surprised to see this fact apparently overlooked. As an avid golfer I’ve seen this particular phrase repeated many times, including during the TV commentary for last week’s PGA championship.
Am I missing something? (For those of you non-golfers, Vijay Singh has won three majors–the PGA twice, and the Masters once) as well as 31 other PGA titles. He’s not a footnote somewhere.
*Vijay Singh ? The First Asian World Number One
It was a proud moment for Asian golf when Vijay Singh dethroned Tiger Woods to become the world’s number one golfer after winning the Deutsche Bank Championship. Indeed, Vijay Singh has the distinction of being the first Asian to accomplish this achievement.*
South Korea is in Asia. Fiji isn’t. Someone born in South Korea is Asian born. Someone born in Fiji is not. It’s that simple.
Singh probably identifies as Indian, as do a lot of other Fijians of Indian descent. His ancestors are likely all from the subcontinent. So he can technically be called Asian, but that is an ancestry/culture based epithet, not a geographic one.
If Sing was born in Fiji then he was not born in Asia and thus can never be considered for the title of “first Asian-born player” to do anything. He also can not, IMO, be considered to be the first Asian player to become the world’s number one golfer. Since his claim to being “Asian” is purely cultural/ancestral then he is no more or less Asian than Tiger Woods, who beat him by several years.
SO Woods is the first Asian player to become the world’s number one golfer.
Would that only a name were required to elevate one’s status…I could just arbitrarily put Esq after my name and garner even more respect. yourself.
This particular Pedant is remarkably ignorant on nearly everything and I learn something new every day (my handle is an effort at self-deprecation and if you click on the link on my profile you’ll see why).
Today I learned Vijay Singh should not be considered asian. I think it was his Sikh heritage that had me so muddled early in the day.
Thanks for the education, all. I will tick off my checklist for learning something today and return to my reading on knife edge flight. Another ignorant question may follow soon on that…
It’s considered part of Oceania, which is not a continent. Since Fiji is floating way out there in the middle of the Pacific, I don’t think it would make sense to assign it to any continent.
Well, if Fiji were going to belong to any continent, it’s closest to Australia. I don’t think that makes anyone happy, though. Except maybe Australians, since Fiji looks pretty nice. And I like the sound of “Vijay Singh, Australian professional golfer.”
Both Hawaii and Fiji are on oceanic crust, which is fundamentally different in composition and structure from continental crust. As a former geology student, I just cannot think of oceanic-crust islands as part of any continent at all. I guess what you meant is that Hawaii is politically attached to a nation of North America.
If Turiddu Giuliano had achieved his (admittedly daft) goal of getting Sicily admitted to the US as the 49th state, would it then be on the continent of North America instead of Europe?
Are St.-Pierre and Miquelon (two islands belonging to France, a few miles off the coast of Canada) part of the continent of Europe?
I don’t know. But like, legally isn’t Hawaii considered part of America? I mean it’s not physically in North America, but I don’t see why the island isn’t considered part of N. America when you’re talking about which continent it’s in. How can it be part of America but not in North America?
You’re definitely going to get a lot of flak for that one. Politically, yes. Geographically, no.
French Guiana (on the South American mainland), Martinique (Caribbean), and Tahiti (Polynesia) are all part of France but not Europe. Geography trumps political ownership. Hawaii is tempting because it is closest to North America but I don’t think assigning islands to their closest continent is a viable strategy in the Pacific, which is so immense. Plus you’d some nonsensical results, like Fijians being Australians and so forth.
yourself.
