Ready To Shine

A range in Shenzhen draws a wide spectrum of players.

When Tomson Shanghai Pudong GC opened 11 years ago, the faux Mount Fuji built between the ninth and 18th holes was the tallest structure on the skyline. Now the course cowers beneath office towers, power lines and luxury high-rises—including the four 50-story buildings of the Tomson Riviera, where condos top out at $22 million.

The initiation fee at Tomson, which is home to the BMW Asian Open on the European Tour, is $170,000 with $1,800 a year dues. Of the 700 members, 300 are from overseas. The green fee for guests is $125 plus caddie on weekdays, $180 plus caddie on weekends. Guests can play without a member, but a member must make the tee time.

Across town at Sheshan International GC where the HSBC Champions, another European Tour event, is played, the initiation is $230,000 and guests can only play with members. Ten years ago Richard Cheung worked in the Pudong section of Shanghai, and there was a driving range nearby.

"I started hitting balls on that range," says Cheung, who is now president of Sheshan GC, telling a familiar Chinese story. "I learned from golf something that is a good lesson for business: You can be too aggressive." It is a lesson those involved in golf in China employ judiciously as they try to nudge the government gently toward acceptance of the game.

Inside the Tomson Pudong clubhouse Hsiao-Chen Chuang, the director and general manager of Tomson Golf Ltd., adopts a casually commanding pose as he converses from a chair he fills regally, gesturing in a Don Corleone sort of way. Chuang is originally from Taiwan, as are many of the movers and shakers in China because they possess capitalist experience. At one point he opens a closet door to put an envelope in a safe that contains, among other things, five dozen boxes of Titleist Pro V1s.

"If we had someone like Se Ri Pak the game would take off here," says Chuang. "The government perception of golf will determine how fast the game will grow. Basically, they are not supporting it. They see it as an elitist sport and that it takes land away [from farmers]. If not for the moratorium, we could have 5,000 golf courses—maybe 10,000."

The first international tournament in China was the 1995 World Cup at Mission Hills in Guangdong, the first province designated a Special Economic Zone and allowed to liberalize its economy. The team competition, which has been played around the world since 1953, returned last year as the Omega Mission Hills World Cup and will remain there at least through 2018.

China's first regularly scheduled tournament was the 2004 BMW Asian Open, which moved from Taiwan to Tomson, where it remains. The Volvo China Open was added the next year, followed by the HSBC Champions in 2006.

According to sources familiar with the situation, the HSBC Champions—which has a contract with Tiger Woods to play three times in a five-year period—will become a World Golf Championship event by year's end. In October the LPGA will play the first Grand China Air LPGA at West Coast GC in Haikou on Hainan Island. International corporations eager to tap into the Chinese market see golf as an important tool toward that end.

"We think golf is the right match for our brand," says Magnus Wiese, head of BMW golf marketing, which partners with 30 tournaments on a variety of tours. "We set up a liaison office here in the 1980s, and it is now one of our five biggest markets. Our sales in China have grown five or six times in the last 10 years." According to The New York Times, car sales in China have increased eight-fold since 2000.

"Golf is not a mass event [in terms of spectators] like it is on other tours," says Wiese, "but it is a quality audience." In fact, there are not so much galleries at the BMW Asian Open as there are parties surrounding the tournament. Picnic baskets, cell phones, laughter, crying children, loud conversations and people reading outnumber those actually watching golf.

While the number of tournaments in China is growing, the potential on the participatory side barely has been scratched. According to an R&A study, there are 250,000 golfers with a registered handicap among China's 1.3 billion people. The United States has 4 million registered golfers, and 32 million total golfers, in a population of 304 million. If China had the same per capita participation as the United States, it would have nearly 17 million registered golfers and the total number of golfers would exceed 130 million.

A key path to this growth involves junior programs, which are in their infancy. The R&A, UBS and the Mission Hills resort support the Faldo Series Asia, a 12-tournament circuit with four in China. Last year the China Golf Association, HSBC, the R&A and IMG jointly launched the HSBC China Junior Golf Program, the only officially sanctioned junior program. This year the program put golf in physical education classes in 40 schools—sort of a Chinese version of The First Tee.

China's best competitors include Liang, amateur Hu and Lian-Wen Zhang, the first Chinese to win a top pro event.

"Helping develop the game of golf in China is one of our key priorities," says Duncan Weir, director of golf development for the R&A, which donated £100,000 to the project. Weir says more than 1,200 junior golfers will participate in seven tournaments and two camps this year and that the school classes will expose more than 70,000 children to the game. On July 23-25, the the first China-USA Youth Team Championship, an initative of the CGA and the USGA, will be played Langfang City.