Video: A retired Yao Ming hits the links

Author:
Ben Eagle
Publish date:
Oct 22, 2012

Yao Mings hit the links for a celebrity pro-am over the weekend in China. (Gareth Gay/Getty Images)

By Ben Eagle

Since retiring from the NBA in July 2011, Yao Ming has done it all. He's become a global ambassador for wild life conservation, dabbled in the culinary arts, posed with pandas and even found time to play a little defense. But now it appears Yao has found another hobby: golf. The 7-foot-6 former center hit the links over the weekend for the Mission Hills World Celebrity Pro-Am in China and the results were ... well, you'll see. Find the video after the jump.

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"He's obviously a very new golfer," Brian Manzella, a Golf Magazine Top 100 teacher, said of Yao. "He's facing the challenge every new golfer faces ... [and] that club is definitely too short for him."

So where does he rank among NBA retirees? The shot was bad, but few can approach the atrocity that is Charles Barkley's swing.

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Just for fun, here are a couple more shots from the course:

Yao Ming addresses the ball before hitting a shot on Sunday. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)