Banned, but booming!

RAMESH KUMAR

Strange, but true. Chinese authorities are in a quandary. While the Land of Dragon has gone multinational truly, the hunger for land to build 600 odd golf courses – most of them with 18 holes – is the bone of contention. The government banned the construction of golf courses six years ago and stopped issuing the mandatory permit. Still 400 plus new courses were thrown open or under construction. Golf courses are the rage to hawk million dollar residential palaces around the course to the growing expat population. Banned, but booming.

Comedian Robin Williams must be laughing at what is happening to golf in China of late. What has Robbie got to do with golf, you wonder? Recall his memorable dialogue in the 2002 “Live on Broadway” drama. Don’t? Here it is:

“I knock a ball in a gopher hole. Not with a straight stick, but with a little different shaped one. The ball goes in a gopher hole hundreds of yards away. There are obstacles in the way like trees and bushes and high grass. So you can lose the ball. Go whacking away with an iron. Each time you miss, you feel like you'll have a stroke. And you’re going to die. Right near the end, I'll put a little flat piece with a little flag to give you hope. But then I'll put a little pool and a sand box to deceive with your ball again. You don’t do this one time, but 18 times.” Audience roared in laughed day in and day out. Particularly at Robbie’s Chinese accented dialogue. More so for bashing up most-loved American sport viz., golf.

It is no secret that all land in China belongs to the government. The recent crackdown on Anji King Valley Country Club near Shanghai, readying for a Ladies European Tour event in October by the Beijing Golf Police – a crack team – has come as a surprise. Only in 1984, China lifted the ban on golf, because until it was considered as the “rich man’s game” which costs $160 per round on weekend for the million plus avid golfers in a nation of billion plus.

Government data claims that it has less than eight per cent of its arable land to feed one fifth of world’s population. Since 1996, it has lost close to 30,000 square miles of arable land to the feverish construction activity. Honestly, their data is sketchy because their estimate is based on satellite imagery. When the government declared that there were just 10 golf courses, actually there were 176 known courses on ground in finished or unfinished form.

The Anji facility will not be turned back into farmland again. Even the Beijing Golf Police’s demolition kept away from areas surrounding well maintained fairways. It is a popular golfing centre even among the bureaucrats. This should at least save this course from closure. The Handnice Group, owning Anji facility, have paid penalty to local government for illegal use of land in the recent past – twice at least.

Olympics 2016 will have golf as one of the disciplines. China has of late begun to host a lot of pro games and boasting that it wants to raise not one, but more Tiger Woods. These will be just empty words unless facilities on ground are there. Despite all this hullabaloo Hainan Club, nicknamed Project 791, may become the world’s largest golf course with 22 courses, occupying an area equivalent to one and half times the size of Manhattan. Come 2020, the golfing landscape in China may have altered dramatically. China would go whole hog to be the world leader at any cost. Don’t be surprised to see Chinese golfers among the top 10 over the next decade or so. Because everything is possible.



Appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, March 19, 2010