One of the United Kingdom's favorite, if minor sports is the race for readers of various national newspapers to claim in the letters column that they have heard the first cuckoo of the summer. On the European Tour the parallel is to wait, with bated breath, for the first first-time winner of a ranking European event.

It was with happiness for the individual concerned but also a small feeling of being cheated, therefore, when somebody cracked it in the very first tournament of the 2007 season.

Yes, okay, we know that 2007 doesn't start for a while, but such is the packed nature of the European Tour International Schedule these days that we have to start next year before we've finished this one. It's a bit of an anomaly but if it give the guys a chance to earn a few sheckels and not subject themselves to the necessary but can-be-boring tedium of practicing, who's complaining?

Not Yang Yong Eun, for sure. The jolly South Korean had won a couple of tournament this year before he ever got to Sheshan International Golf Club on the fringes of the seething metropolis of Shanghai for the HSBC Champions tournament, but neither was remotely in the same league as this one.

To win, Yang had to beat by far the toughest field, on the toughest course, with the biggest purse than the other two put together. To win, he had not only to keep control of his head and his swing but also find the strength to repel an entry list that contained such luminaries as Tiger Woods, Retief Goosen, Jim Furyk, Michael Campbell and Padraig Harrington.

It was with a smile that Woods waited for Yang as this unlikeliest of winners came to the recorder's hut to sign his card and claim his prize. Woods admitted that neither he, Robert Karlsson or Henrik Stenson, his playing partners, had ever heard of Yang. They had now.

South Korean golfers have for some years been at the cutting edge of the world game, but until Yang and K J. Choi came along, it had been the fairer sex who had formed the Asian assault on the global game. Now, with Choi having won the Chrysler Championship a couple of weeks ago, the men are muscling in on the act, too.

The cash Yang scooped up for his victory will be welcome, of course, but not half as welcome as the fact that it qualified him for membership of the European Tour -- an option he took up without further ado -- and the fact that his triumph came in the first tournament of the season means that he now has the rest of this campaign and two more before he has even to contemplate such unpleasant things as the Q-school.

He might need a good deal of the folding stuff that he tucked in his billfold to mount a proper assault in Europe, but it will be money well spent.

It's sometimes said that good players will play well anywhere and it's a theory that is not without substance. But, that having been said, there is a vast difference between plying your trade on hard, fast-running layouts in Spain and Portugal and being asked to eke out a score on, say, the Old Course at St Andrews or the lush, tortuously difficult parklands of Wentworth or Loch Lomond.

Coming from a country where course architecture is heavily influenced by American design precepts, Yang will need to push himself through a pretty steep and rapid learning curve. If he is good enough, he will make it through, but at 34 he has to take lot on board.

If he manages it, he will be lucky that he has come to a European Tour that is healthier, wealthier and more diverse than at any time in its history.

There is the chance, also, that he may not be able to acclimatize to Western customs and traditions. He may hate it here and not be able to wait to get back home.

But even if he does loathe Western European culture, he will go back to his homeland content in the knowledge that during his sojourn on the other side of the world he will have become a better golfer. He has an unparalleled chance. We hope, for his sake, that he can take it.