worth reading Chu on This

Here's the prevailing sentiment in golf these days, courtesy of instruction guru Hank Haney: Everyone in the golf world knows that China is the place to be. Golf is growing and growing here, and there is no reason to think it will stop.

Last week, Forbes published a profile of the fellow who touched off China's golf boom: David Chu, the developer of the Mission Hills golf resort in Shenzhen, the world's largest golf club, and Mission Hills Haikou, the fast-growing golf resort on Hainan Island.

Ron Gluckman, Forbes' reporter, says Chu "may be the unlikeliest driving force that a sport has ever seen." Here are a few things you probably didn't know about him:

Chu made his money in the paper business. (His company was the now-defunct Shun Feng Corrugated Carton Factory, which Forbes says was once the largest paper-and-packaging business in Hong Kong and China.) Today Chu owns a pair of Asian companies involved in construction and real estate management as well as four hotels (a Marriott and three Hiltons) in suburban Atlanta, Georgia.

Despite owning at least 15 golf courses, Chu doesn't play much golf. (Growing up, tennis and badminton were his games.) He got involved in golf development because he felt China's growing army of business go-getters would enjoy rubbing shoulders on the links.

"I saw that golf was played all over the world but not yet in China," Chu told Forbes. "I knew it was good for networking."

Mission Hills has been touched by scandal. In 2002, Gluckman reports, one of Chu's investor-partners, Harry Lam Hon-lit, was shot through the head as he was eating breakfast in a teahouse in Hong Kong. Harry Lam had earlier filed suit against Chu's company, in a dispute over the value of his holdings. He was killed just before the case was scheduled to go to court.

Mission Hills Shenzhen was built on a garbage dump, and Mission Hills Haikou is taking shape atop a lava field -- nearly solid rock.

Ken Chu, David's son, told Forbes, "It's like the center of the earth, a 10,000-year-old lava bed. There's no soil, hardly any vegetation. It's much worse than jungle, because you can carve a course from jungle. In Hainan, we blasted into rock to put in soil for the vegetation."

Incidentally, Forbes says that the resort on Hainan island will have 10 courses within five years and could wind up with 20.