worth reading Unraveling the Mysteries of Golf in China

China: Is it golf development's next frontier or just another grand illusion?

Adam Lawrence addresses that question in the July issue of Golf Course Architecture. In "China: Golf's Wild East," he discusses a variety of hot-button issues, including golf's relation to real estate speculation, the potential for golf development on Hainan Island, and the number of golfers who could eventually emerge in the People's Republic. His story is liberally seasoned with comments from architects who've seen, with their own eyes, how things work there.

Here are some points that caught my attention:

-- Developers in China may not be building as many golf courses as their press agents have suggested. According to Richard Mandell, a Pinehurst, North Carolina-based designer with a project in Hunan Province, There are only about 150 active golf course projects under construction. Yet, if you talk to golf architects, everyone has about four or five projects. I am afraid many of those are just simply hanging on a wall, waiting for a market.

-- People have begun to reassess the development possibilities for Hainan Island, where some observers once predicted that as many as 100 golf courses would be built.

You have to worry about Hainan, because there’s so much being built, so much already built, and still so much in planning, says Dana Fry, a Columbus, Ohio-based architect with two courses in the works on the island. Everyone you talk to down there is doing projects that are two, three, four courses each. The real scary thing is the bubble situation with the housing market.

-- Though golf is growing in popularity in China, it'll be a while before anyone describes the Chinese as golf-crazy. Here's Mandell again: I’ve never seen a full house at any course I’ve visited in China. I’ve seen busy driving ranges, but never a full golf course.

-- Finally, Lawrence notes that there's strong development potential in “regional,” cities that aren't nearly as well known as, say, Beijing and Shanghai. He quotes John Strawn, the president of Toledo, Ohio-based Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest & Associates: If you look at Shanxi Province, which is about an hour’s flight south of Beijing, there are cities of about a million people -- very nice, very clean -- and they have no golf at all. These regional cities will each want at least one or two courses.

Here's a link to "China: Golf's Wild East."