Singapore #Fitspo of the Week: Su-Ann Heng

Life goes beyond the digits on the scale and your body is capable of so much more! Yahoo’s #Fitspo of the Week series is dedicated to inspirational men and women in Singapore leading healthy and active lifestyles. Have someone to recommend? Hit Cheryl up on Instagram or Facebook!

Name: Su-Ann Heng (@suannheng)
Age: 30
Height: 1.69m
Weight: 57kg
Occupation: TV & Radio Presenter and Professional Emcee
Status: Engaged
Diet: Generally believes in a well-balanced lifestyle; enjoys cooking at home and eating healthy throughout the week
Training: 2-3 times a week of HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training), pilates and light weight training; tennis and golf 1-2 times a week

Q: You were formerly a pro golfer. Tell us more!

A: Early on in my professional golfing career it was really exciting. I managed to get starts to play on the Australian LPGA tour during the summer and then would go back to the United States and compete there. I came close to qualifying during Monday qualifiers for a few LPGA events and also had a chance to advance in the LPGA qualifying school (where you get to qualify to make it to the main tour).

The adrenaline and the nerves were fun to experience. I wouId say some of my highlights happened during road trips and travelling with my fellow tour players from one event to another. Golf can be a very lonely sport, so travelling with good and fun friends usually helps.

What were some of the ups and downs of your professional career?

Being able to meet and chat with the late legend Arnold Palmer was the ultimate highlight! On the flip side, golf is also a sport where it can take you down really quickly. It takes years to build confidence and one shot to destroy it.

Some of my biggest challenges were definitely going through injuries but I think the one that really got to me was something called the “yips”. It’s a state of extreme nervousness that causes an athlete to lose their motor skills. It’s something that occurs without any warning and really no explanation to it and really not much you can do other than ride it out. I remember being at a tournament where I could barely dare to hit off the tee, the fairways looked so small, and the ball looked even smaller. I wish there was a way to explain it but there isn’t. It was brutal.

When did you decide to retire from pro golfing?

I started getting injuries a little more often than I would like and I was taking weeks or months off during every season. Of course that didn’t help with my progression professionally, and I wasn’t achieving the goals I had set out for myself. At one point I remembered I just felt myself getting quite frustrated and disappointed, so I took a few weeks off to reflect and evaluate my situation.

I had to be honest with myself and realise that I just wasn’t enjoying the professional golfer lifestyle as much as I thought I would have. At the same time, I felt a sense of happiness with what I’ve achieved for myself in the sport and felt in my gut that it was the right time to call it quits. I figured I had done what I could and gave it my 100 per cent and that it was time to move on to a different career.

How did you get into golf in the first place?

I was introduced to golf when I was nine. My parents wanted to play a sport together as a family and Dad was interested in golf, so we started going to the driving range to hit some golf balls over the weekends. I started to really enjoy it and wanted to go to the range more often during the week.

I remembered being so addicted to the sport – from training to competing. Just about the same time in 2000, Tiger Woods was at his peak of his career, dominating the golfing world. He took golf as a sport to another level, and at the time as a 12-year-old kid I was like, “This is cool, I want to be like him.” That made me realise I want to make golf my career.

Did you compete in other sports before you focused on golf solely?

I started with athletics in primary school where I competed in 100m, 200m, 4x400m relay and high jump. My older brother loved football so he used to get me to play football with him in our backyard everyday. I enjoyed it so much that I started playing football with a whole bunch of boys before school started and would turn up for assembly all sweaty. About the same time I picked up golf, I was also into bowling. Then when I got to secondary school, I played volleyball and netball concurrently with golf. I represented the school team for netball tournaments till I left for Australia for further golf development.

Were there any challenges after retiring from a professional sporting career?

My self-confidence hit a low in 2015 when I first moved back from the US to Singapore, after I decided to stop competing in golf. My life took a 180-degree change and was filled with a lot of uncertainty and self-doubt. For starters, I had been away since I was 14, so as familiar as Singapore was on many levels, it also felt foreign to me for the first year or so.

Career wise, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do or be. I had spent the last 18 years playing and focusing on golf and wasn’t sure what was next for me. I was like a headless chicken for the first year or so and didn’t have the same sense of purpose and fulfilment like I did when I had golf. I’ve always been a bit of a goal-driven person with a vision of what I want to do, so being that clueless was detrimental to my self-confidence.

How did you overcome that difficult phase?

A lot of it was having a great support team – my family, great friends and my fiance who were there for me through it all and could understand what I was going through. But it took me about 1.5 years to really settle in and get used to being back in Singapore – the culture, the lifestyle, living back with the family.

Things started to take a turn for the better when I had a bit more direction in terms of my career. I was very lucky to have gotten on a couple shows on Fox Sports Asia for the LPGA. I really enjoyed the entire experience and it was like a light bulb went on when I realised that this could be something I could embark on. I started getting on more regular shows with them for the LPGA and that got me into a bit more of a routine. Then someone came up to ask me if I host events and I said, “No I don’t, but I’ll give it a go!” From there on I started hosting events as well, and then things just started to come together slowly from there.

That’s great! What are some of them misconceptions about golf though?

A misconception about golf is that it’s often thought of as a “rich man’s sport”, but that is not true. Golf is getting more accessible in this day and age. We have some great public driving ranges for people to go to, to have a great time with friends or family, and public courses that are decently affordable.

I usually encourage people who love the sport to think of it as: If it’s $190 for 18 holes, break it down to per hour. Golf takes about five hours, so that works out to be $38 per hour. Which really if you think about it, considering the cost of all the other activities in Singapore, golf is pretty reasonable!

Then I also have people saying that golf is an “old person’s sport” or that golfers aren’t really athletes. However, if you take a closer look at top players in the world on both men’s and women’s tours, the average age of players is getting younger and younger, and players are much fitter than they used to be and have placed a serious emphasis on how physical fitness is essential to the sport.

Golf is for everyone and every age. It is a great sport that is so much fun when you get to know it, and it helps build many great skills that can be applied to life in general.

What are your fitness goals now?

Working out and staying fit has always been a big part of my life, with or without golf. Golf used to be my biggest drive for all my workout goals (eg. to get more speed, more distance, more mobility) but now my main goal is simply to stay healthy and fit, to feel great and most importantly, to have fun doing it.

Are you satisfied with your body now? Do you get any comments about your body?

When I first came back and I was at my fittest, I had a lot of people come to me and say “Wow you’ve put on some weight”, or “Are you trying to be a bodybuilder?”, or “You look big on TV”. And it bothered me for a little bit because, while I was in the US, they were so much more positive about having a fit and defined body. Now when I returned home, it almost seemed like it was a bad thing.

But after a while, I just realised that people who put other people down isn’t a reflection of me, but more about them; so I decided to carry on with fitness routines. Now my fitness goals are different and I train according to my needs. I am satisfied and contented with my body these days and will always strive to be better.

Honestly I am just like most women; I have days where I don’t feel my best, but those days usually pass and nothing a glass of wine can’t fix.

What are some misconceptions of fitness in today’s society?

That you can lose weight or get healthy by just exercising. Sufficient changes starts with better eating habits and that plays a much bigger role than exercising.