From a nation of poets comes a golfer with gifts

From the land of Nobel Prize-winning poets has come a calm bard with a golf club. Joaquin Niemann of Chile doesn't read Pablo Neruda, but with a club in hand he has a fine imagination.

- Rohit Brijnath

From the land of Nobel Prize-winning poets has come a calm bard with a golf club. Joaquin Niemann of Chile doesn't read Pablo Neruda, but with a club in hand he has a fine imagination. Forget the 100 per cent of sand saves all week. Or the zero three-putts. Poetry comes at the 12th hole on March 16, when the LIV Singapore champion is in the bunker and composes a seven-iron which travels 165 yards and lands six feet from the pin.

There's a moment sometimes in a young athlete's career when you can't look away. When skill is powerfully advertised and toughness presented. This is that time for the Chilean, who has played 17 events on the LIV Tour since 2024, had 12 top 10s and won four times. Consistency is the bedrock of greatness.

Niemann is six, slim feet of concentration and his face resembles chipped granite. Later he'll grin, heave his wife into the air, fling a glove into the crowd, but on the course he seeks a quiet clarity.

"Inside me, everything is going on," Niemann tells The Straits Times later. But emotions have to be restrained. There are times on the course, he says, "you get super nervous or you're not 100 per cent sure of what you're doing. And for me it's about committing. And I feel the less voices I have in my mind, the more for me it's easier to commit".