Two things you count on not striking twice: lightning and golf shots, which makes Manhasset golf coach Michael Tarnowski’s fortuitous position all the more remarkable. Tarnowski would’ve counted himself blessed with one burgeoning wunderkind.
Partly due to their relative youth, spindly Ryan Liu and his lanky counterpart, Ethan Yao, hardly exhibit the quintessentially sturdy, solid repose of elite athletes. Ryan, the big guy, boasts a 5-foot-10 135-pound frame, while Ethan is a strapping 5-foot-9 125-pounder.
Still, when the young leaders, glue-guys of the Manhasset golf team, step onto the fairway, their slight, unassuming bodies metamorphose. Suddenly, they project sinewy potency, elicit steady elasticity, and generate wiry torque.
When the freshman duo steps up to the tee, each exudes the energy, swagger, and confidence part and parcel to success on the golf course. That’s not youthful talent but proficiency honed through hours of practice and dedication.
“In a week, I play [about] 66 rounds of golf and then take a break one day to dedicate to. practice or just drill specific stuff,” explained Ethan. “In the off-season, I work out at a gym and do strength training. My game has definitely gotten longer, but at the same time, I was able to keep my short game from when I was younger through hours upon hours of practice.”
Ryan, who, according to Ethan, is the more cerebral golfer of the two, had a different perspective on his body growing into his game, and his game growing with his body.
“When you are in 7th grade, you are still small,” Ryan explained, “When you’re younger, every ball is straight. You can hit a shot super hard, and no matter what, your miss is always straight. As you get older, you fine-tune your mechanics so that your misses aren’t completely off course…you have to play the curves; aim at wider targets. When I putt or chip, instead of a lot of people, who just guess on their putts, I kind of just see the line. I don’t know how to explain it to other people. When I play with Ethan, it’s typically good because we have the same skill set in that kind of department.”
“[Ryan and Ethan are] both cut from the same cloth,” said Tarnowski, a former college baseball player and self-professed golf-junkie who came to Manhasset in 2020. “They grew up playing tournament golf together. They’re both amazing golfers, right at the same level. They don’t think like a typical ninth grader, about shots. They are very calculated, able to hit all the shots in the book.”
With a passion fostered amongst the bucolic opulence of Long Island’s idyllic North Shore country clubs, Ethan Yao and Ryan Liu began playing golf before kindergarten. The two met when they were six years old and were playing together in tournaments soon thereafter.
Coach Tarnowski heard about the boys while they were still in elementary school, when they routinely finished in the top 10 at New York Metro junior tournaments.
Source: LI Press
