golf in china
Arnie's Gem: The third hole on the first course in Modern China is a real beauty. At 368 metres a hair over 400 yards it's not long, but like the majority of the holes at the Palmer Course, it requires sound strategy.
Where it All Started This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Palmer Course at Chung Shan Hot Spring, the first club in postRevolutionary China. HK Golfer pays a visit to what is still one of the most enjoyable layouts around STORY AND PHOTOS BY ALEX JENKINS ADDITIONAL PHOTOS COURTESY OF ARNOLD PALMER DESIGN 42
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uch has been rate of golf course construction on the Chinese mainland in recent times that no-one is entirely sure how many courses there actually are. From an approximate number of 240 five years ago, there is now thought to be anywhere between 450 and 700. It could even be more; it certainly won’t be less. China has taken to golf in a way not seen since the Japanese fell in love with the Royal and Ancient game in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but the feeling among those in the industry is that this is only the start of things to come. Japan’s course numbers, which once stood at over 2,500, are dwindling; the game, like the Japanese economy, has stagnated resulting in an alarming rate of club bankruptcies. China, on the other hand, thrives, even during these less financially exuberant times. “In China, golf is just exploding,” said Jack Nicklaus in July. “China is probably our key market today.” HKGOLFERMAGAZINE.COM
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“I felt a sense of added responsibility since we were not only building a new course, we were introducing the game to the most populous nation on earth.” – Arnold Palmer
Back in Time: Palmer (fourth from left) and his design partner Ed Seay (second from right) show off their plans during a site visit in 1982; the Palmer Course is one of those rare mainland layouts that doesn't feature a golf cart track - it's walking only. How refreshing! Crossing the canal at the 3rd. 44
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The Golden Bear should know. Like Japan, course construction in the United States is at its lowest point in decades, and architects – from big name designers like Nicklaus to much smaller fry – continue to flock to this part of the world in search of contracts. The game’s best players may still ply their trade in America on the PGA Tour, but you’re more likely to find world-class golf course designers traipsing around sites in far-flung places like Hainan and Yunnan province than you are in California or Florida. Much has changed. While we don’t yet know where the China golf boom will take us, we do know when and where it started. The year was 1984 and the place was Yung Mo, a sleepy Guangdong village lying in the shadow of the Laoshanwei hills, an hour and a half’s drive from the Macau border. In August, the finishing touches of the
Arnold Palmer-designed layout at Chung Shan Hot Spring Golf Club were complete and for the first time since the 1930s, when the British enjoyed games on fairly rudimentary layouts in Shanghai and Beijing, the country had a course. Golf in China was back, not quite with a bang, but with the blissful smack of persimmon connecting sweetly with balata. Chung Shan’s genesis lies with the late Henry Fok, t he club’s t hen owner and one of the richest men in the world. Fok already owned a nearby leisure resort, one of China’s first, and wanted to increase its recognition outside the country’s borders. The answer, says Timothy Fok, Henry’s son and International Olympic Committee member, was golf. “The idea was to give the resort international status and golf fitted the bill,” remembers Fok. “Back then China was undergoing a lot of change – and although it was opening up, we had to be careful as golf was considered very elitist. We set ourselves very strict guidelines. For instance, we made sure that we would only build over the hillside and not on agricultural land.” Fok was no stranger to the game. He had already employed the services of Arnold Palmer to build a course he owned in Japan, and it was the King he returned to with his plans for Chung Shan. “It was a pleasant surprise when he asked us to become involved,” says Palmer. “[But] what I didn’t know when we took on this design project was that no golf course had been built on the Chinese mainland since World War I. Ed [Seay, Palmer’s late design partner] and I felt a sense of added responsibility since we were not only building a new course, we were introducing the game to the most populous nation on earth.” Chung Shan is among 200 courses around the world that bear the Palmer name, but nowhere, he says, ranks anywhere close in terms of uniqueness. “To call the experience eye-opening would be a gross understatement,” recalls Palmer. “The HKGOLFERMAGAZINE.COM
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Classy Chung Shan: Palmer's understated bunkering at the 4th; Liang Wen-chong, China's best-ever golfer, continues to live near the course he grew up on.
site was in the foothills of the Chung Shan mountain range, with a mountain on one side and rice paddies on the other. By our initial calculations we would move approximately four hundred thousand yards of dirt, not a huge amount by today’s course design standards but still a healthy earth-moving project. What I didn’t know at the time was that every ounce of dirt and rock would be moved by hand. The only bulldozer on the project was a WWI-vintage machine that belonged in the Smithsonian. The engine still worked, but nothing else moved, so for weeks thousands of Chinese workers moved the better half of a halfmillion yards of earth with shovels and burlap sacks. The rocks too big to fit in their sacks were carried on their heads. Boulders were ground to gravel by sledgehammers, with workers lined
Need to Know Chung Shan Hot Spring Golf Club Green Fees (Visitors): RMB550 excluding caddie fee (weekday only) Getting There: The club is a 40-minute taxi ride (RMB100 each way) from Zhuhai Jiuzhou port. Regular sailings throughout the day from both the HK-Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan and China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui to Zhuhai (www.cksp.com.hk) Contact: www.cshsgc.com.cn
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at the ready to remove the rocks when they were small enough to be carried away. It was an unbelievable sight.” Even today, Chung Shan remains quite the sight. As one might expect of a 25-yearold course, the Grand Dame of Chinese golf isn’t long by today’s titanium-enriched, jumboheaded standards, measuring some 6,396 metres from the tips (Chung Shan could be the only course in China that follows the national metric standard). But what it lacks in length, it more than makes up in charm, with paperbarks bordering its winding fairways and a variety of fruit trees and blossoming shrubs adding a delightful diversity to its backdrops. While modern courses in the mainland tend to be dominated by huge swathes of both sand and water, the Palmer Course is a much more subtle test, its resistance to low scoring a result of strategic design and its small, beautifullyshaped greens. In truth, it plays like one of the heathland gems that you find in the English Home counties. Take away the Laoshanwei hills that hove into view on a number of holes and first time players could almost be forgiven for thinking they’ve been transported 6,000 miles west to leafy Berkshire. The Palmer Course is something of a rarity in tropical Guangdong because it features bentgrass rather than Bermuda greens. Bentgrass
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is a fine leafed, somewhat delicate strain that is normally used in generally temperate areas. By rights it shouldn’t be able to cope with the heat and humidity of southern China, but it appears to do just fine, and come the cooler winter months, the Palmer is home to the smoothest and quickest greens in the province. Stimpmeter readings in excess of 11 are the norm.
The Golden Boy
Chung Shan’s most famous member – in golfing circles, at least – is Liang Wen-chong, China’s greatest ever golfer. Now 31, Liang is a former winner of the Asian Tour Order or Merit and broke into the world’s top 100 following victory in the 2007 Singapore Masters, a cosanctioned event between the European and Asian tours. His story, like the course he has played for the past 16 years, is unique. Born and raised in nearby Yung Mo to working-class parents, Liang, then 15, was part of a group of local schoolchildren offered free lessons by the club, something which few other golf clubs in China these days manage to stretch to. Showing early promise, the club, under the direction of Alywin Tai, a dapper Hongkonger and Chung’s Shan’s first general manager, took him under its wing, allowing him to play and practice as much as he wanted on a complimentary basis. “This golf club is like my family,” Liang tells me over lunch in the club’s agreeable woodpaneled clubhouse a week prior to the Open Championship at Turnberry where he would unfortunately miss the cut. “Even though I still had to go to school until I was 18, I played here everyday and received regular coaching, which was crucial to my development as a golfer. I couldn’t be where I am now without their help.” The subject of junior golf in China is a topic that Liang is understandably passionate about. After winning the Singapore Masters, he donated his prize earnings of US$183,000 to help set up a development programme for young golfers in the region. “If other clubs can grant access to young golfers then China will have many more successful professional golfers,” says Liang matter-of-factly. “If they can follow the model of Chung Shan then China can one day have more players playing on the bigger tours. At the moment, there’s no system and unless you’re a member of a club it’s very difficult to even start playing the game.” Liang has played countless renowned courses, including Augusta where he became only the second Chinese golfer to make the Masters field, but for him, the Palmer remains his favourite. HKGOLFERMAGAZINE.COM
This golf club is like my family… I couldn’t be where I am now without their help.” – Liang Wen-chong
“This is where I am most comfortable,” says Liang, who holds the course record with a 10-under-par 61. “The history of the club, the connection with Arnold Palmer…these things are very special and unusual in China where the courses are so new. But for me, this club will always be my home.” HK GOLFER・AUG/SEP 2009
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Zheng Dai: Life as a Chung Shan Caddie
Getting it Built – Arnold Palmer’s China Experience During my construction site inspection in January 1982, I saw what appeared to be an enormous tent village dotting the landscape. Upon closer inspection I found that these were 10’ by 6’ thatch huts, and each hut housed at least eight construction workers. As we wondered through the village and shook hands with the workers, I was amazed by their upbeat and indefatigable spirit. The work was backbreaking, but they couldn’t wait to invite us into their modest dwellings and offer us food and drink. Standing outside one of the huts, I took out a small tape recorder to dictate some notes. One of the workers looked at me as though I had just come from another planet. I showed him the recorder and had him speak into the microphone. When he heard his own voice he almost fell over in astonishment. In appreciation he ran to another hut and came back with four new straw hats, the kind worn by the workers. “No, no,” I said. “We don’t want those. But we’ll give you the new ones and take the old ones from four of the workers.” They were thrilled. I also gave this man a golf ball I had in my pocket. He stared at it for a few moments, then tried to take a bite out of the cover. “No,” I said. “You don’t eat it.” That’s when it dawned on me that the men engaged in the grueling labor of building our course had no idea what golf was. When I explained through an interpreter that this ball would be used to play the course our new friend was building, his eyes lit up and he took the ball from me as if I’d just presented him with the crown jewels of China. Later that afternoon we were caught up in a terrible downpour, the kind of blinding rain great for growing rice, but that shuts down the shaping of a new golf course. Ed and I were quickly escorted to a nearby hotel when we stripped naked, given thick towels and told to wait in our rooms while our clothes dried. I felt silly standing in a room with only a towel around me, but we had a television, which proved quite entertaining. The only channel we got was playing an old black-and-white Glenn Ford movie I didn’t recognize. “Oh my god, that’s Follow the Sun,” Ed said. “What’s that?” I asked. “Follow the Sun,” he said. “It’s the Ben Hogan story.” “No,” I said. I’d never seen the movie. “Sure,” Ed said. And sure enough, he was right. It was hilarious, but there was Glenn Ford dressed as Ben Hogan, coming back from his near-fatal car crash to win the US Open, with Chinese voices dubbed over the picture. Ed and I watched the movie for thirty minutes. Then our clothes – washed, dried and perfectly pressed – showed up on the doorstep. A few months after that first site visit, Ed got a call from the project manager. There was a problem with the irrigation system and they needed some help. Ed called a friend in Hong Kong and asked him to trek up to Chung Shan. When Ed’s friend called back, he could barely stop laughing. “You’re not going to believe this,” the man said. “They’ve assembled the irrigation to exact specifications. But they did it above ground.”
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I was one of the first professional caddies at Chung Shan. Before I started, in October 1986, the green-keepers would do it, but they were only bag carriers at best. I remember going for the selection process. There was around fifty of us there but only ten got chosen. I was 22-years-old at the time and knew nothing about golf, but back then, caddying was considered a premium job, so I was happy to have made it. If I wasn’t a caddie I’d probably have become a driver. In the late 1980s 70 percent of the caddies at Chung Shan were male. Things change. Now there are approximately 240 caddies and 210 of them are female. During my first month as a caddie I was paid RMB5 per round plus tips. After that the fee went up to RMB10 a round. In those days it was better to get tips in HK$ because of the exchange rate: HK$20 was worth RMB30, which was pretty good. Today of course we get more. Now the rate is RMB90 per round plus tips. Hong Kong golfers are the best tippers. And of course there are some people who don’t tip at all. In more than 20 years of caddying I’ve only seen four holes in one. I’ve caddied for quite a few famous people, including [actors] Alan Tam and Eric Tsang. Nowadays, most parents want their kids to go to college and caddying isn’t seen as such a good job. I suppose there are more opportunities for the new generation but most wouldn’t make good caddies anyway. Today’s youth don’t like the sun and they don’t like working hard. The best thing about caddying is the flexibility. I enjoy working outdoors – I wouldn’t like to be stuck in an office – and at Chung Shan the caddies are allowed to play on the course once a month, which I really like. My normal score is around 80. I also play on what we call the ‘Caddie Course’. We built it ourselves on a construction site. It’s very simple but fun to play. The worst thing about caddying is getting a bad tempered golfer. Some players get angry if they miss a putt and then blame the caddie. It’s not the caddie’s fault. The player thinks we gave them the wrong line, but actually they just made bad putts. Because of my experience I now oversee a lot of the caddie training. Caddying has enabled me to support my family and I do enjoy it, but once my two daughters graduate from college I think I’ll probably retire.
Ed had a representative from [irrigation specialists] Toro fly to the project site and confirm that the crew had, indeed, assembled the irrigation system perfectly. The pipes and heads were all in place, except they were above rather than below ground. When water passed through the system, the heads were flying everywhere, and men were being injured when they tried to hold them in place. Toro brought in an engineer, and the staff quickly buried the lines in place.
Extract taken from Arnold Palmer: Memories, Stories and Memorobilia from a Life On and Off the Course
Another Gem: The Nicklaus Course
The 18th on the Nicklaus Course HKGOLFERMAGAZINE.COM
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The Nicklaus Course at Chung Shan, which opened in 1993, nine years after the Palmer, ranks among the finest that the Golden Bear has put his name to in Asia and is almost the complete antithesis of its older brother. More mountainous and water-strewn that the Palmer, the Nicklaus favours the longer hitter, but with expansive bunkering and large, strongly contoured greens, a deft touch on and around the putting surfaces is also required. Although a private club, visitors are permitted to book tee times on both courses during the week. Weekends and public holidays are reserved for members and their guests. Together these two courses cement Chung Shan’s status as one of the premier clubs in the mainland.
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