TWENTY years ago, the European Tour ran 27 tournaments and staged almost half of them in Britain and Ireland with just one, the Tunisian Open, played outside mainland Europe. Yet as the world has shrunk, so the Tour has grown. It now visits the Middle East, South Africa, Australasia and, surprisingly, China.
As China has adopted an increasingly open-door policy, so golf has started to establish a foothold. In each of the past two years, the European Tour has played eight tournaments in China — just four fewer than will have been held in Britain and Ireland in the same period.
The biggest by far has been the HSBC Champions, a tournament of winners from Europe, Asia, Australasia and southern Africa, which made its debut in Shanghai last November and included among its number the greatest drawing card of them all — Tiger Woods. He may not come cheap, but Woods is fabulous value. That week he undertook a clinic, faced what seemed like all of the nation’s media at a press conference and provided classic photo opportunities when attempting to drive the ball across the Huang Po river (impossible, even for him).
The galleries following him were large and, to some extent, out of control. Most of the thousands that turned up had probably never experienced golf before and were simply there to hunt down the Tiger. Armed with cameras, they would click away when the fancy took them and cross fairways at will. To his credit, Woods carried on as if nothing was happening and finished second behind David Howell, the Englishman.
Just 23 years ago China got its first course, an Arnold Palmer-designed layout in the southern Guangdong province. Now there are more than 200, all privately owned and many financed by foreign capital. The majority are to be found in Guangdong, but the game has started to spread to the north and west. However, new development is closely controlled by a government acutely aware of water shortages and the pressures on agricultural land.
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Membership of clubs does not come cheap. This is not yet a game for the masses although driving ranges are springing up in the main cities. It is hard, though, to think that a nation that is leaving no stone unturned to find gold medal-winners for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 will be satisfied until it has golfers challenging on the world stage.
As with most sports, it takes extensive television coverage and preferably a home-grown winner to spark an interest. Zhang Lian-Wei, a former javelin thrower and club caddie who taught himself the game, has become his country’s most famous player. In 2003, Zhang became the first Chinese golfer to win a European Tour event, taking the Caltex Masters in Singapore from under the nose of Ernie Els after sinking a birdie at the final hole. And as if to underline the long-term commercial importance of China to the game, it earned him an invitation to the 2004 Masters.
But what of the future? A number of young players have been taken under the wing of the Chinese Golf Association and BMW, who sponsor the China girls’ and boys’ teams. Many of them got to play alongside some big names the day before the BMW Asian Open last April.
One player, however, is attracting attention already. At 16, Hu Mu has a lot riding on his shoulders. He is well-built, stands almost 6ft tall and was to be seen consistently outdriving Nick Faldo when they were paired together in Shanghai. Hu’s potential was identified early and he now lives most of the year in the United States, where he is coached by David Leadbetter in Orlando.
At 15, Hu won three national junior tournaments in the US and on a trip back home made the halfway cut in two Asian Tour events. Ranked eighth in the junior world rankings by Golfweek magazine at the end of 2005, Hu was the only amateur to play at the HSBC Champions last year, where he finished 61st out of a field of 72 with a four-under-par final round of 68.
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What the future holds for Hu, nobody really knows. His journey, as well as that for Chinese golf, will make for interesting reading.