Faced with declining interest at home, Western golfing stars and golf tourists are being lured to massive new golf courses in China, shortly to be site of the world's largest. The Chinese themselves are increasingly turning to the sport, formerly regarded as snobbish and exclusive. Land and water shortages, however, could spoil play.

By MARK GODFREY

Competitor in a children's golf competition preparing to tee-off.

BILLBOARDS at the entrance to the Guomao subway station in Beijing's business district read "Golf Wonderland for Germany Life (sic)," handily synopsizing a preferred vision of sophistication as seen by the urbanites who staff the local offices. Live amid the pine trees of a local Black Forest, minutes from a golf course and you've made it, the thinking goes. Fifteen minutes walk south leads to the site of this real estate idyll. There are no trees in sight, only a construction site wedged amid clusters of high-rise office buildings. This is Beijing's Central Business district so there's no room for any golf course. No matter, explains a salesperson in the on-site sales office. They'll build a driving range and plant some trees to make it look like Germany. The "golf course view" mentioned on the billboard is actually a driving range.

Golf is being used increasingly by Chinese property developers to lend a cachet of Western sophistication to their properties. The game has become immensely popular in China after a hiatus of over fifty years. China's last emperor Pu Yi learned the game from his English tutor in the 1920s but it wasn't until the 1980s that economic planners began to see the game as a chance to attract foreign investment to China. The first golf course built in post-revolutionary China was designed by golfing icon Arnold Palmer and opened in southern Guandong Province in 1984. More than 4.5 billion euros have been spent on China's courses since then, according to international consultancy firm the Golf Research Group, making the country the fifth largest golfing nation in the world in terms of green space. Foreign investment in courses is allowed, but there are restrictions on shareholding.

China has 195 officially registered golf courses, peppered across 22 cities -- a comparatively small figure compared to the US's 20,000. Another 500 to 1,000 new courses are under construction or near completion. Meanwhile, around 110 golf clubs have a total membership of 30,000, plus a further 200,000 frequent non-member golfers. The potential is obvious, says golf course designer Barry Humpthy, who came to China from Australia to establish an office for his company, Wayne Grady Golf Design. The firm sees a lot of potential in China, says Humpthy, who's directing one design project in China and examining several potential contracts. "It's the right time to be getting here, because golf is very new in China. It's growing fast and it's going to be a big market for us."

Young middle-class social status-seeking professionals have caught on to coffee, horse riding, cocktails and now, golf. In a land where the average GDP per capita barely reaches 1,000 euros, it's an expensive way to climb the social ladder. Green fees at the Beijing Golf Country Club in Shunyi District hit 1,200 yuan (119 euros) at weekends, and the prestigious Silport Club in Shanghai charges 60,000 yuan (5,950 euros) for full membership. The majority of the club's 700-plus members are ex-pats or foreign tourists. "Golf is a very popular sport in America and most professionals can afford it there. But in China, like in Japan and Korea, the price of playing is extremely high. It is just for the elite," says Zhang Shidong, a consultant at the Beijing office of Mercer, an international recruitment company.

To dodge the high green fees, locals practice their shots at driving ranges, of which there are many in major cities. The Dongjin Golf Club in Beijing's upmarket Chaoyang District is hardly a club in the conventional sense. It's more a ragged driving range thrown up on a real estate site that's been cleared but untouched for the past two years. For 50 yuan (4.95 euros) golfers can hit an unlimited number of balls for one hour, hitting from a shed formed by the facade and concrete floor of a house that once stood here. Sheets of polythene make up the roof.

Until recently, golf was the preserve of China's business elite. Today young Chinese returning home with qualifications and training from abroad have taken up the game, creating a whole new market of educated and ambitious office workers who see the game as an opportunity to network and mix with foreign peers. "In 1994 the sport was really in its infancy here," says Peter Williams, from Small Steps Consulting Ltd., who has advised golf enterprises in China. "I think everybody believes that China has become the fastest-growing golf market in the world."

The complete absence of public golf courses probably means that the game will remain an elitist sport. Golf has provided a healthy source of tax income for a nonchalant politburo: course developments are taxed at 23 percent. The tax is partly meant as a means to control over-development in the sector but has hardly succeeded. Almost half the country's 200 golf courses are situated in Guangdong Province, bordering Hong Kong. Others have been abandoned or are not in use because of bankrupted real estate projects, common in China, but villa projects built around golf courses sell very well in Beijing and Shanghai.

Playing golf is beyond the means of all but China's most affluent social stratum.

With government tax on golf courses higher than 20 percent, land purchase accounts for 70 percent of set-up costs, while income comes from membership dues, green fees, equipment hire and facilities like the clubhouse bar and restaurant. Golf consultant Phil Moylan reckons investment can be quickly recouped. "I think the golf course business is good because it creates a lot of jobs in management as well as for caddies and turf grass maintenance workers. The average 18-hole course in China employs about 60."

There's also money to be made off the course. China, the world's leading exporter of golf equipment, shipped US $858 million worth of gear in 2003, according to the Golf Research Group. But there are also plenty of counterfeit Spalding irons and Callaway golf balls selling in China for a fraction of the price of legitimate goods.

Sportswear makers Nike and Adidas have large manufacturing bases locally but are also strengthening their marketing presence. Golf industry chiefs worldwide will gather in Beijing in June for the PGA Show Asia, a "trade summit and expo" organized by the Asian wing of the Professional Golfers Association (PGA).

One of the PGA's stars in the East, "Asian Tiger" Zhang Lianwei is China's number one golfer, with wins on the PGA's Canadian, Asian and European tours. Having won China's highest paying competition, the Volvo China Open, last year, he's now targeting Japan, Asia's most lucrative golfing circuit. Zhang joined Yeh Wei-tze from Taiwan and Hong Kong's Derek Fung to take on Tiger Woods in the BBK Tiger Woods Mission Hills Challenge in November 2001. The game venue was the Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, a huge industrial city rubbing up against Hong Kong in south China's Guangdong Province. Woods won the contest. A massive media event in China, local businessmen paid US $160,000 each to play one hole of golf with Woods. Part of a broader real estate project, Mission Hills is the only golf club in China recognized by the US PGA. It's also set to become the largest golf course in the world when the 180th hole is added to the massive complex later this year.

Costing 2 billion Hong Kong dollars (200 million euros) to build, work began on the Missions Hills course in 1992 and it opened to the public in 1995. Occupying 10 square kilometers of land, Mission Hills is a country club incorporating a five-star hotel, entertainment center and a villa complex. Mission Hills also has the largest golf accessories store in Shenzhen where it retails its own brand of golf products, the MH range, of which sales have been steady, says the club.

On his visit to Mission Hills, Tiger Woods launched the local branch of the First Tee Foundation, a program that seeks to enhance the affordability and accessibility of golf for locals. The First Tee initiative has its work cut out for it in China, where only a small percentage of the overall population can currently afford to pay green fees or buy golf equipment. "Before reform, golf was not favorably viewed by Chinese society; it was seen as too elitist and a rich man's game," says Yang Guangping, five-time winner of the Helong Cup, China's premier amateur tournament. "Now China's economic development is spurring a new interest in this sport, and I believe in ten years' time Chinese golf will be able to match the rest of the world," says 64-year-old Yang, who turned his late conversion to the sport into a business. He owns a driving range and a golf equipment store in Beijing.

Golf is so far a male-dominated sport in China. "We're really trying to make golf appeal to younger readers, but for that to be successful the overall cost of playing the game must come down," says Zhang Jianhong, editor of China's Golf Magazine. His priority is to make golf more popular among teenagers and women, as only 14 percent of Zhang's readers are female.

The biggest obstacles to the continued growth of golf in China are land and water, both in short supply in Beijing and the industrialized north. The capital is facing a serious water shortage, the city's unrelenting expansion having drained rivers dry and forced municipal chiefs to divert water from other provinces. Just north of the Beijing Riviera luxury villa complex northeast of the city, a golf course has been in planning for the past two years. Brown and gray, the course is pockmarked with small clumps of trees. Locals here might be able to count on some jobs from the courts ¡ª if it ever opens - but the huge amount of water that will be needed to irrigate it if it's to be successful will exacerbate the already acute water shortage in this community. Government environmental experts have also complained about the high usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to nourish the grass on golf courses as they have begun to pollute local water supplies. Taking up arable land for golf and real estate projects is also a sensitive issue in many Chinese provinces, where farmland is needed to grow foodstuffs.

Still, experts predict that China's golf space will double by 2006. Shanghai golf club manager Liu Yong has been the business six years in: "Last year the club's income increased almost 80 percent and I reckon on a similar surge in business for the next few years."