SINGAPORE – Shannon Tan is having a contemplative moment. Are you surprised, she’s been asked, by how fast things are happening in your life?

She pauses. Just as she might deliberately do over a golf shot.

“I don’t even know how to feel, to be honest,” she replies. “It’s like, it happened, okay.... I’m quite like a mellow person.”

Welcome to Singapore’s latest emerging talent, a fuss-free, soft-spoken, no-drama competitor. Her name has just been inscribed on a Ladies European Tour (LET) trophy; television is asking for interviews; autograph hunters are lining up; there’s nearly $100,000 in her bank balance in her debut season and it’s only February; but the shy Singaporean remains a modest study in 19-year-old cool.

It’s fitting Tan is calm because no one else is and her pinging phone is proof. “It’s just going off,” she says and offers a hint of a smile. Already over 200 messages and still counting. “I am still getting some and it’s been four days.” Four days since history. Four days since her life changed on Feb 11 with a sweet swing of a club at the appropriately named Magical Kenya Ladies Open.

Now it’s Feb 15 and she’s by the Red Sea at the Aramco Saudi Ladies International. Last week she was 12-under in Kenya and champion; this week she had a 77 and 72 and missed the cut at five over. This game tests, lurches, frustrates but she has the necessary ingredient to meet it.

Tranquility. 

“The feedback I’ve got from other people is that I’ve just got no emotions.” As a 14-,15-year-old, she wasn’t as cool, but now she says “I think as I matured, I just move on and forget about the past”.

But don’t let this calm fool you, for behind the serenity rustles ambition. Peel back the placidity and you’ll find a pressure-relishing, competition-craving athlete who uses a fake casino chip to mark her ball but has a game based on practicality, not gambling.

The first thing she learnt as a kid was to hit balls and this simple, repetitious act is like a hymn to her. Even on her days off, she says, “my hands get itchy”. It is a labour which has resulted in a player who says “ball-striking is one of my best parts of my game, just fairways and greens. Even if I don’t hit it as well, it’s still not bad”.

Winning requires assorted ingredients but first it demands a craving for the arena. “I like competition,” she admits. “I like having something on the line.” So what happens when something is on the line? “I don’t know how to describe it. I just get more turned on or focused.”

Nerves pinch on big days, expectation lifts on Sundays, and pressure creeps through the cracks. But she’s just fine with it. “People say when they’re pressurised, they get scared, but to me, pressure is, I kind of like it, it drives me to try and be the best version of myself.”

In a space of a few months, Tan qualified for the LET, was second at the Webex Players Series’ Murray River in Australia, eighth at the Vic Open and won in Kenya. But there’s no such thing as an overnight success, only the painstaking arrangement of pieces in an athletic jigsaw. Then an intriguing picture appears.

As a kid, she ran the 800m competitively, dabbled in tennis but fell for golf. Around 10 years old, it struck her, maybe this thing she loved could become her life. “It will be great,” she thought, “if I can actually make a living by doing something that I literally can’t live without doing.”

Golf has consumed her since and now her jigsaw is made of what she calls “one percenters”, athletic jargon for small, skilful additions made to a game. Ask her where’s found one per cent improvements these past 12 months and a list appears.

“I tried gaining distance. I was maybe just short of average.” And so she did “speed training” which involved using speed sticks, which are flexible shafts with a weighted end. “I just had to learn how to swing fast... I’ve always grown up being so concerned about hitting it straight, that my body doesn’t dare to swing fast.”

Another piece was putting. “I was pretty good from five feet in,” she explains, but the longer it got, to about 15 feet, the trickier it was. Pace, line, all this was polished and so was her chipping and recovery. “If I missed the green, I got more percentage of up and downs.” But like any athlete, of any age, she remains an incomplete painting.

This week is Saudi Arabia, next week is Morocco, a life of flights and hotels and no college administrator to plan for her. This is the solitary, examining land of the tour golfer, but it’s where she has wanted to be, among these women who appeared on her television when she was a kid.

“I feel like I learnt a lot more watching women’s golf. Men’s golf is entertaining, they all hit far and stuff, but I can relate more to women’s golf.” Now 19, people are relating to her. Now, suddenly, without warning, she’s the inspiration. It’s not an easy label to wear so young and so how does it feel? She thinks and gently says: “It’s nice.”

The professional world Tan now inhabits is edgy and competitive, and she can sense it. “The atmosphere is definitely different. There are spectators, TV cameras and there’s just more eyes on you.”

You like that?

“Yup.”

She can’t explain why, but she’ll say this: “Ever since I was a kid I (was) happy when I saw a camera.”

The better she plays, the more cameras will turn her way, but a long journey awaits her with no destination guaranteed. So she’ll keep doing what she does best, mixing peacefulness with practice and sending her stats to Ryan Lumsden and David Nable, her coaches in Australia. “Honestly, I am not good at analysing things,” she says. “I’m not the best with numbers.” She’s simply efficient at hitting them.

Tan doesn’t have any sponsors yet, but winning is the finest lure. Fairytale beginnings spark expectation but she comes cloaked in a quiet grit. There will be rough days, frustrating days but also days when the club cuts through the air smoothly, birdies drop and the reward at the end of the day is something cold.

“Tiger, Sapporo, Asahi,” she says when asked about the beer she likes.

And then she adds with a grin: “I have expensive tastes.”

Fortunately she has the prize money to afford any type of beverage. Anyway she deserves it because she has earned it.