At age 14, Lorens Chan coasted to an eight-shot victory in the State Amateur Stroke Play Championship, two months after playing the Sony Open in Hawaii.

Last year, at 16, he coasted to another eight-shot state stroke-play title, two months before winning his second state high school championship. In November, Chan, born in Taiwan, finished second at the Fubon Senior Open after receiving an exemption.

Five weeks ago, he was having surgery for appendicitis. Today, he tees off at Pearl Country Club in the first round of the Stroke Play Championship, less than a week after taking his first post-surgery swing.

“With all this rain and school, I don’t have much practice time,” Chan said, “but I still want to be a serious contender and will try my very best to defend.”

The layoff is his longest since he started golfing. He withdrew from the Hawaii Pearl Open and AJGA HP Invitational, but Chan was chipping and putting two weeks after surgery. He took his first lesson with coach David Ishii on Friday, wearing a protective “girdle.”

The ‘Iolani senior is headed to UCLA on a golf scholarship in the fall. He picked the Bruins over Cal, Duke, USC, San Diego and Washington because, in part, UCLA coaches were so familiar. They had watched him at several mainland tournaments and even came here three times — including that 2009 Sony.

Chan is 24th in the national junior rankings and has been in that range since before the Bruins signed him in November along with Kamehameha-Maui’s Aaron Kunitomo. They were part of a recruiting class of five. UCLA, currently ranked fifth, has only one senior on its 11-player roster. It has won 13 events the past four-plus seasons and qualified for the last nine NCAA championships, winning in 2008.

The team’s academic progress is also exceptional, another snug fit for Chan, whose interests at ‘Iolani include hula. The golf team won the school’s academic award last school year with a 3.311 grade-point average, despite missing 36 class days for competition. A typical day for UCLA golfers begins at 6:30 a.m. with yoga, followed by class, a team meeting and practice into the evening.

There might not be another State Stroke Play Championship for Chan after this year. This week means a lot to him, along with the other 80 golfers in the open flight and the 20 competing in the first senior division. Allisen Corpuz, who turned 14 Wednesday, is the only female playing.

This tournament started in 1928 and only Damien Jamila, Allan Yamamoto and Arthur Armstrong, who won seven straight starting in 1937, have captured more than two titles. Chan and the late Chris Santangelo, who was 13 under par when he won at Waialae in 1983, are the only two golfers to get into double digits under par in the Hawaii amateurs’ only 72-hole tournament.

Chan’s winning score was 10 under both years. He accomplished it in three rounds in 2009, when rain washed out a day.

Along with Corpuz and Chan, the field includes nine of his teammates from the victorious Governor’s Cup team, former Manoa Cup champs Brandan Kop and Jonathan Ota, and 11-year-old Evan Kawai. The senior flight includes Paul Kimura, Mervin Matsumoto, Peter Rice and Phil Anamizu.