'My wife says I'm mad': The 75-year-old gunning for a medal at his first SEA Games
Mr Tan Kok Tiong was intrigued by the people playing a strange game near his home in Bishan. Semi-retired in his 50s, he decided to try it. This December, he will be proudly wearing Team Singapore colours as he guns for gold.
75-year-old Tan Kok Tiong playing woodball at a course in Pasir Ris on Nov 16, 2025. Mr Tan is the oldest athlete representing Singapore at the upcoming 33rd SEA Games in Thailand in December 2025. (Photo: CNA/Ooi Boon Keong)
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When I first speak to Mr Tan Kok Tiong, he tells me he has never given a media interview and has no clue about what he's supposed to do or say.
That makes two of us being clueless because, before this interview, I had never heard of the sport he is playing: woodball.
I soon found out that it is a serious sport with a thriving community of players in Singapore who are mostly seniors, with clubs all over the island from Yishun to Clementi. In fact, it's serious enough to be making its debut in this year's SEA Games.
Indeed, all six players on the men's team headed to Chonburi, Thailand in December are between 63 and 75.
On the women's team, five of the six players are aged above 60. The sixth is 17-year-old Gwenifer Mak, an ITE College Central student.
Woodball is clearly favoured by older people rather than younger, but more on that later.
First, how did Mr Tan, a 75-year-old father of two and grandfather of four aged 15 to 22, go from being a curious onlooker to part of the country’s official sports contingent?
It started with a move to Bishan 25 years ago, when he had already semi-retired.
"I noticed there's a field and people playing this game. It looked like golf but seemed quite easy. I asked them what it was about and they said, 'just come join us'."
In the beginning, he said he was just a "ball picker" gathering other players' balls – but the more time he spent on the green, the stronger his curiosity grew.
"The first time I played, the ball went everywhere. But I didn't care, I just learn. Slowly, I got better," said Mr Tan who worked as a stock broker for a trading firm until the late 1980s and then dabbled in private investing until he retired in his early 50s.
Having spent many years playing golf, he found many similarities in woodball. Instead of 18 holes and switching between 15 different clubs, he had to adjust to just one mallet, one ball and 12 fairways.
With plenty of time on his hands, he decided to give woodball a real go and started playing every day at the course, conveniently located just two blocks away from the Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat where he lives with his wife. He made friends and found a place in a tight community of fellow enthusiasts.
A year later, he joined the Woodball Association and that's where things started to get serious.
THE ORIGINS OF WOODBALL IN SINGAPORE
Invented in Taiwan in 1990, woodball is a mainly outdoor sport where players use a wooden mallet to hit a ball through a series of little "gates" – which are, interestingly, made out of recycled beer bottles.
Even the mallet head is bottle-shaped, leading me to wonder if the man who dreamt up this game did it at the bar after a bout of drinking.
Modelled loosely on golf, it is meant to be much easier because the distances are shorter and it can be played on grass, sand or indoor surfaces. As the popularity of the sport spread, the game soon made its way to Singapore in the late 1990s via the People's Association which was on the hunt for a sport that could engage citizens to be active as they grew older.
Like the pickleball movement today, this small but dedicated community soon mushroomed – there are now 20 woodball clubs island-wide, of which about a dozen are linked to community centres.
The trick, said Mr Chong Tien Siong, 68, chief executive officer of the Woodball Association of Singapore, was to make the fairways accessible to everyone who lived in the heartlands.
The Bishan course, where Mr Tan and his team practise, is a little green enclave wedged between the NTUC FairPrice supermarket and a hawker centre. Anyone walking to get groceries or breakfast will not miss it.
And the course, which opened 20 years ago, is lovingly cared for entirely by volunteers – with trees and other plants dotting the fairway. For monthly mini tournaments, everyone converges on the Clementi Woods Park course which meets international standards, said Mr Chong.
This is how the national team’s youngest member Gwenifer Mak found woodball too as the course was near her home in Clementi.
When she was 12, she followed her mother, who also played woodball, and began playing regularly too.
"The course is just opposite my house, so it was very convenient. The more I played, the better I became and when they held tournaments to pick the national team, I managed to score quite well," said Gwenifer.
As the sport's popularity grew worldwide, international competitions began to take place, in which Singapore teams participated.
At the 2008 Asian Beach Games in Bali, Indonesia, Singapore's Ng Yeow Gim became the first to win a gold medal in woodball in the men’s category.
That provided an impetus for the association to send a Singapore team to take part in various international competitions, such as the Hong Kong Open in October this year where the team ranked third among more than 300 athletes from nine countries. And now they are headed to their biggest competition yet.
Singapore's very first SEA Games woodball delegation consists of 12 players. The youngest is Gwenifer at 17; the oldest is Mr Tan at 75.
Both Mr Tan and Mr Chong said it is a perfect game for seniors. There's no need for speed or strength, but decent mobility and stamina is important.
"It is not like swimming or running," said Mr Tan. "As long as you can walk and swing the mallet, can already!"
Gwenifer adds that being in the company of a team much older than her is very calming.
"Mr Tan and the others are very easygoing and open to teaching and guiding me. It is quite a healthy environment," she said.
ROAD TO GOLD?
With just four teams competing in the games – Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – Mr Chong believes there is a good chance of a medal in Chonburi. He said the team has been hard at work, practising every day, rain or shine.
I asked Mr Tan how his family reacted when he told them he had been picked for the team. He laughed heartily saying they were just as surprised as he was.
"They don't believe it. My grandson said, 'Huh, you can play (so well) meh?'"
His wife has long adjusted to her husband's absences when he is away at tournaments. Even in Singapore, he starts early in the morning (I was asked to meet the team at 8am on a Sunday, which sounds criminally early) and sometimes doesn't end till 4pm.
Even so, her reaction to her husband’s forthcoming SEA Games adventure was far from stoic.
"She says I'm mad," said Mr Tan, with a cheeky grin.
He is also learning about what it takes to compete at an elite level. He confesses to being caught off-guard by the level of planning and operations that go into sending a single team to a tournament like SEA Games. For instance, he was required to undergo a battery of medical tests.
"I was so surprised at how strict everything is – check this, check that," he said with a laugh. On the whole, he found the non-athletic preparations to be far more strenuous than whatever he did on the green.
Aside from a balloon angioplasty some 30 years ago for his heart, he has been healthy and eats pretty much anything.
He is especially proud of the fact that his hair is still almost entirely black, readily whipping off his cap to show me. "See, all real, no dye!"
'JUST TAKE EACH DAY AS IT COMES'
As the competition nears, I ask him if he's under any pressure to do well for his first SEA Games outing.
None of that, was his quick reply. As a Buddhist, he believes in not being weighed down by things he cannot control.
"I'm very relaxed. I was a high-flyer and lost money (when economic crises hit), so over the years, I've learnt to let go," he said.
"With some worries, even if you think until the cows come home, you still cannot solve it. (It's) best to just take each day as it comes and do your best."
Which is why his primary goal for his first outing at a major international tournament is simply to enjoy it.
The way Mr Tan sees it, if the team does win a medal, it would simply be the icing on the cake for what has been a happy journey of learning, friendship and keeping active in his golden years.
"Just being selected for the national team to represent Singapore is already a big honour for me," he said.
He knows he will be up against younger, fitter players who can hit further. But Mr Tan said there's a small superpower in his advanced age.
"At our age, we are steadier. We don't panic; we can relax, enjoy the game and do our best."
