China: Golf Packages & Golf Courses

A Brief History & Deveopement of Golf in China

Golf was invented by the Chinese in the 10th. Century A.D., so claim some historians…or really? Come to think of it, what else wasn’t done there first if you agree that the first ever tea-off was definitely there long before any respectable Scot ever thought of a drink, let alone golf?

Hmm…pots full of tea for thoughts isn’t it, but does it really matter at all? In 1984, the Party condemned the sport as a decadence associated with colonialism. Less than 25 years later, there are some 200 golf courses in China with another reported 500 and more in the pipeline. When fully completed, it will rank China in the top few of the world golf nations. If you think the golf history of this vast and ancient country is so brief as it has so much self-transformed in so short a time, you can only feel the underlying current of change that is taking place in this modern, ‘capitalist’ China of today.

Some time around the time golf was banned, the late Henry Fok of Hong Kong, one of the richest men in the world, engaged Arnold Palmer, one of golf’s greatest, to design the first golf course in post-revolution China. The product of their meeting was the Zhongshan Hot Springs Golf Club, near Guangzhou in southern China’s Guangdong Province.

“The fact that it was part of history was one of the reasons I agreed to design the course. As it has turned out, we really did lay the cornerstone for golf in mainland China and we are all very proud of that.” said Palmer, who acknowledged too the huge part played by tycoon Fok and the hundreds of Chinese laborers who used rakes, shovels and their bare hands to fashion a championship golf course out of a featureless tract of land.

To mark the 20th. Anniversary of the first course in China, a special tournament was organized which, other than some big names in the professional circuit in Hong Kong, also included the pioneers of professional golf in the country like Zhang Lian Wei and Zhongshan native Liang Wen Chong.

Today, as a tribute, both Zhang and Liang have hit big times in Asian Tour as well as the PGA European Tour. And, there is a string of young and promising players in the wing eagerly awaiting to follow their footsteps. Going by the past records of Chinese successes in producing world champions in other sports, the golf world ought not be surprised by a sudden emergence of a Tiger Woods of China, as reportedly there has been a drive to seek out young talents to be groomed for the coveted role.

Whether or not such a rapid change to the landscape for an albeit vast country with such high population density will eventually prove detrimental to the sport of golf and the nation as such is a subject of much controversies. China has put the brake on the development of new golf courses, as it looks into projects that push ahead without proper permission. One of the best policies China has undertaken so far is to require that a comprehensive masterplan be prepared for a site prior to granting approval for a golf course permit or land-use conversion. The world can only await so patiently as it would so whole-heartedly trust the good management to ensure the game of golf blossom than otherwise.

No doubt the sport is increasing in popularity in China and sponsors are drawn to an economy that grows in double digits for the last so many years, and the fastest too of an economy of any country in recent times. Before Shanghai staged the first Formula One race in China in 2004, the city was already hosting another sporting debut: The BMW Asian Open hosted by Tomson Shanghai Pudong Golf Club – the first European Tour event in China. The sponsors moved the event to the mainland after only two years staging it in Taiwan apparently drawn by the promising future there, and that only says so much of what is in store in the new land of opportunity for not only golf but an entire spectrum of what is gain able.

“..China is the only country which has a 100 percent growth in golf..” Former world No. 1 Greg Norman told reporters. “It’s growing like no other countries in the world.” Period.