VIETNAM Crazy Eights

In the summer of 2008, just months before the world's economy imploded, a parade of developers planned to build something like 18 new golf courses in and around Hanoi.

Today only eight are still alive. And by the time you read this, there may be even fewer, because Vietnam's government has been whacking golf projects faster than an HBO crime family.

The most recent executions occurred earlier this month, when officials in Hanoi told 11 developers that they should, in the words of a Vietnamese news service, "pursue other plans." The reason? The developers' golf courses -- along with the houses and hotels that were to accompany them -- were going to be built on rice fields and were therefore not in the national interest.

So 11 developers are out of luck and at least a little out of pocket. You can add their projects to the nearly 100 golf licenses that have been revoked in Vietnam over the past year or so.

But here's the odd part: I've been reading the newspapers, and I haven't heard a word of complaint from any of the developers whose Hanoi projects were whacked. Not one peep about the unfairness of it all.

Why not?

I think it's because Hanoi has done the developers a favor, and they know it.

Hanoi doesn't need 18 golf courses. For the time being, at least, it can get by nicely with the two or three it already has, plus the one or two that are said to be under construction. It may never need anywhere close to the eight that remain on the books.

The tourism ministers won't admit it, but Vietnam is not a golf-mad country. Heck, it's not even a country where golf can honestly said to be growing.

This is a country that, according to the New York Times, had two golf courses in 1975, when the Vietnam War ended. In the 35 years since, the nation has built 15 or 20 more courses but has managed to grow only about 5,000 golfers -- about the number you'll find in a seniors-only community in suburban Phoenix.

Sure, Vietnam needs some golf courses for tourists, but those courses will be built in places like Nha Trang and Phan Thiet, where there are warm beaches and women in bikinis. How many vacationers are going to spend a week in Hanoi, even if it has a dozen golf courses?

Roughly 6.5 million people live in metropolitan Hanoi, and the fact is that hardly any of them golf. Wouldn't it be wiser for Vietnam to develop the golfers before it develops the golf courses?

I don't know about you, but I'm not convinced that golf is a growth industry in Vietnam.