Asian Golfers on the PGA Tour: Rankings, Wins & the 2026 Presidents Cup Race

Quick Answer: Hideki Matsuyama, the 2021 Masters champion, leads Asian golfers on the PGA Tour with 11 career wins. South Koreans Si Woo Kim, Tom Kim, and Sungjae Im round out the group’s biggest names. As of August 2026, three of the six automatic qualifiers for the International Presidents Cup team at Medinah are Asian-born, and Si Woo Kim currently tops the International points race.

I’ve carried a mid-single-digit handicap for close to a decade, and the Presidents Cup is the one team event I never miss — mostly because it’s the only week when half my group chat starts trash-talking in Korean. Asian golfers have quietly become the deepest, most competitive block on the PGA Tour outside the Americans themselves, and most golf sites still write about them like it’s 2011 and K.J. Choi is the only name that matters. That’s out of date. This guide covers every Asian golfer with real standing on Tour right now — their wins, their current form, and exactly where they sit in the race for Geoff Ogilvy’s International team — plus the Asian American and female Asian golfers people search for right alongside them.

“Asian Golfers” vs. the Asian Tour — Clearing Up Google’s Own Confusion

Search this exact phrase and you’ll notice something strange: half the results are about the Asian Tour, a separate developmental circuit based in Singapore with players like Thongchai Jaidee and Thaworn Wiratchant. That’s a real tour. It’s just not what you’re looking for.

The Asian Tour formed in 1995 and mostly feeds players toward the DP World Tour, not the PGA Tour. If you typed “Asian golfers PGA Tour” hoping to read about Hideki Matsuyama and Si Woo Kim, and instead landed on a Wikipedia category page about a Singapore-based circuit, you’re not confused — Google’s own results are just doing a poor job separating “Asian Tour” the organization from “Asian golfers” the nationality group. Everything below is about the second one: golfers of Asian nationality or heritage competing on the actual US-based PGA Tour.

Top Asian Golfers on the PGA Tour Right Now

Six names carry real weight on Tour today. Here’s where each one stands, including their current status in the 2026 Presidents Cup race — a column you won’t find on any other list covering this topic.

Matsuyama is still the number to beat. Eleven PGA Tour wins is more than any other Asian-born player in Tour history, and he closed out 2025 with a playoff win at the Hero World Challenge before opening 2026 with another title at The Sentry. He finished T7 at this month’s Wyndham Championship, so the form is current, not nostalgic. We’ve written a full breakdown of his career, majors, and current world ranking if you want the deeper cut.

Matsuyama is also the best iron player Asia has produced for the PGA Tour, and it’s not close. The swing looks unhurried even when he’s grinding out a cut number, which is exactly why he’s outlasted three generations of hyped Korean phenoms who came and went before turning 30.

Si Woo Kim, meanwhile, is quietly the most important Asian golfer on Tour right now. Four wins is a modest total next to Matsuyama’s eleven, but he’s currently leading the entire International points race for Medinah — ahead of Adam Scott, ahead of Ryan Fox, ahead of everyone.

The Trailblazers — K.J. Choi and Y.E. Yang

Before any of the current crop teed it up, two South Koreans did the actual door-opening.

K.J. Choi — a rice farmer’s son from Wando Island — won eight times on the PGA Tour across 498 starts, including the 2011 Players Championship, becoming the first Asian player to win the Tour’s flagship event. He’s known as the “Godfather of Korean golf” for good reason: fourteen South Koreans have earned PGA Tour cards since Choi planted the flag.

Y.E. Yang went one further. At the 2009 PGA Championship, he ran down Tiger Woods in the final round at Hazeltine to become the first Asian male golfer to win a major — the only player ever to beat Woods in a major when Woods held the outright 54-hole lead. That’s not a small footnote. That’s one of the more improbable final rounds in modern major-championship history.

If you’re only interested in golfers currently grinding out a full PGA Tour schedule, this section is more history than headline — both Choi and Yang now play primarily on PGA Tour Champions. But neither of the current wave exists without them.

2026 Presidents Cup Watch: Why Asian Golfers Could Make Up a Third of the International Team

This is the section nobody else covering this topic is writing, because it changes by the week.

The 16th Presidents Cup runs September 22–27, 2026, at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago — Brandt Snedeker captains the U.S. side, Geoff Ogilvy captains the International team. Twelve players per side: six automatic qualifiers from the points standings, six captain’s picks apiece.

As of the standings through the Rocket Classic (August 2, 2026), here’s the International automatic picture:

Three of the six automatic qualifiers are Asian-born. Count Min Woo Lee, whose parents are both South Korean, and it’s four out of six. On the bubble for Ogilvy’s captain’s picks: Sungjae Im and rising Japanese star Ryo Hisatsune both sit inside the top 15 of the International watch list.

I’ve watched every Presidents Cup since Choi and Yang first teamed up in the 2000s, and the atmosphere shifts the moment a Korean pairing goes on a run — it did in 2024, and I’d expect the same at Medinah if Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim get paired together again.

If Ogilvy doesn’t pick Sungjae Im, that’s a mistake. He carried a winning record into the 2024 Presidents Cup — five wins, two halves, and three losses across his first two appearances — and that kind of proven team-event record is exactly what a road International team needs against a heavily favored American side.

The U.S. automatic race closes after the BMW Championship on August 23. The International side closes after the Tour Championship on August 31. Both captains announce picks shortly after.

The Next Wave: Kevin Yu and Ryo Hisatsune

Two names to know before everyone else does.

Kevin Yu won his first PGA Tour title at the 2024 Sanderson Farms Championship, beating Beau Hossler in a playoff after closing with a 5-under 67. That made him only the third player from Chinese Taipei to ever win on the PGA Tour, following Chen Tze-chung in 1987 and C.T. Pan in 2019. He came up through Arizona State and the first graduating class of PGA Tour University, and he’s in real current form — T4 at this month’s Wyndham Championship.

Ryo Hisatsune is the one to watch out of Japan. Born in Okayama in 2002, he turned pro at 18, earned his PGA Tour card for 2024, and finished T18 at that year’s PGA Championship — his best major result to date. Early in 2026 he co-led the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am alongside Akshay Bhatia through 36 holes, opening with a career-best 62. He hasn’t won on Tour yet. If he does, he’d become just the sixth different Japanese golfer to win a PGA Tour event, joining Matsuyama, Shigeki Maruyama, Isao Aoki, Ryuji Imada, and Satoshi Kodaira.

Honest limitation here: if you only care about golfers with an actual PGA Tour trophy, Hisatsune doesn’t belong on your shortlist yet. But a share of the 36-hole lead at Pebble Beach and a top-20 major finish before turning 22 both say the win is closer than his results page suggests.

Famous Asian American Golfers on the PGA Tour

This is a different list than the one above, and worth separating clearly. These are American-born players of Asian descent — American citizens who qualify for the U.S. Presidents Cup team, not the International side.

Collin Morikawa is the headliner: a Los Angeles native of Japanese and Chinese descent with two majors already, the 2020 PGA Championship and the 2021 Open Championship. He currently holds the sixth and final automatic spot on the U.S. Presidents Cup team — meaning he’ll be playing against Matsuyama and Si Woo Kim at Medinah, not alongside them.

Michael Kim, a Korean American, carded just the 15th sub-60 round in PGA Tour history — a 59 — at this year’s 3M Open. Akshay Bhatia, who is Indian American, shared that 36-hole Pebble Beach lead with Hisatsune and currently sits on the U.S. team’s captain’s-pick radar. Anthony Kim, also Korean American, is worth a mention for his comeback story, though he’s currently playing LIV Golf rather than the PGA Tour, which is a real distinction if you’re tracking Tour membership specifically.

What About Women? Famous Asian Female Golfers (They Play the LPGA, Not the PGA Tour)

Here’s a mix-up worth clearing up directly: the PGA Tour is a men’s tour. There is no regular women’s PGA Tour schedule — women compete on the LPGA Tour, a separate organization entirely. If you searched “famous Asian golfer female” expecting PGA Tour results, that’s why you came up empty.

The most significant exception in either direction is Michelle Wie West. Born in Honolulu to South Korean immigrant parents, she became the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event since Babe Zaharias in 1945 when she teed it up at the 2004 Sony Open as a 14-year-old. She went on to five LPGA Tour wins, including the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open, before retiring from competitive play in 2023.

Rose Zhang is the current torch-bearer. The Stanford product became the first golfer in 72 years to win an LPGA Tour event in her professional debut, taking the 2023 Mizuho Americas Open in a playoff. And if you want a current World No. 1 story, Ruoning Yin’s path from an accidental golf-club injury to her father at age four to the top of the women’s game is one of the better ones in the sport right now — worth the read on its own.

How to Track the Asian Golfers PGA Tour Schedule & Leaderboard

The PGA Tour’s regular season runs January through August, capped by the three-event FedExCup Playoffs — the St. Jude Championship, the BMW Championship, and the Tour Championship. The biggest windows to catch Asian golfers in major contention are the four majors (the Masters in April, the PGA Championship in May, the U.S. Open in June, the Open Championship in July), signature events throughout the spring, and the Presidents Cup every two years.

One small, practical tip nobody mentions: PGA Tour leaderboards list players by three-letter country code, not by nationality written out. Scan for KOR, JPN, and TPE and you’ll pick out every Korean, Japanese, and Chinese Taipei player on the board in about two seconds — faster than scrolling full names. For live results, PGATour.com and the official PGA Tour app both let you filter or search by individual player name, which is the fastest way to jump straight to any golfer covered here without wading through the full field.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any Chinese golfers on the PGA?

Yes. Haotong Li holds PGA Tour status and splits his schedule between the Tour and the DP World Tour, though he’s based in Shanghai and plays the majority of his events in Europe and Asia. His best major finish is a tie for third at the 2017 Open Championship.

Who is the best Asian golfer?

By PGA Tour wins and major championships, it’s Hideki Matsuyama — 11 Tour titles and the 2021 Masters, more than any other Asian-born player in Tour history. It’s a fair question either way, since Si Woo Kim’s current Presidents Cup standing and Tom Kim’s four wins by age 24 both make a real case.

Does Haotong Li live in the US?

No. He was born in Hunan, China, and currently resides in Shanghai. He competes on the PGA Tour but is based full-time in China.

Has an Asian golfer ever won the Masters?

Yes — Hideki Matsuyama, in 2021. He became the first Japanese man to win a major championship, finishing 10-under to beat runner-up Will Zalatoris by a single stroke at Augusta National.

Bottom Line

Six golfers carry the current Asian contingent on the PGA Tour, and by the end of September, at least three of them will be teeing it up at Medinah for the Presidents Cup. That’s the story worth following for the rest of 2026 — not the history, the standings race happening right now. If you’re working on your own game while you wait for Ogilvy’s picks, our golf club distance chart is worth a look to see how your own numbers stack up.