FOR Yani Tseng, it's going to be hard to top 2011. The world's No. 1 female player won 12 times around the planet, including two majors, and is so far ahead of the rest it is ridiculous.

Plainly, she is the dominant player in the world, man or woman, although she is still struggling for proper recognition. When Golf magazine in the US named Rory McIlroy its player of the year, LPGA commissioner Mike Whan wrote to the magazine querying what Tseng needed to do.

Whan wrote a letter, which the magazine, to its credit, published. ''You have to ask yourself one question,'' Whan said. ''If Yani's 2011 season had been achieved by a man, would you have come to the same conclusion on the 2011 Golf magazine player of the year? I think we all know the answer.''

None of which seems to bother Tseng, whose attitude is to surge forward and let others make the judgment calls. ''Last year is over. This is a new year for me,'' she said yesterday on the eve of a tilt at a third Women's Australian Open on the trot.

The scary part for the other players is that she is working on changes that could make her better, tinkering with her swing for easier power, trying to get fitter and stronger.

She is already much longer off the tee than most of the other players on tour. ''It's stronger,'' she said of her remodelled swing. ''I have more power. I don't swing as hard as before. I feel I am swinging easier and striking the ball better.

''Now I feel that if I swing 70-80 per cent, the ball is still flying better than before. I always tried to swing really hard. Now I don't swing so hard but the ball still goes that far.''

The Florida-based Tseng has popularised golf in Taiwan, her native country, where she won her 12th tournament for the season last October in front of massive crowds in incredible scenes. There were 100,000 people at the tournament, an unofficial one, over the four days, all there to see the country's heroine. Tseng admits that, at least in Taiwan, she is a rock star.