or can’t control, many were built anyway. In 2009, the government’s own tourism directives referred to the “regulation” of new courses. A new ban on course construction was enacted in 2011, but there is little indication of how effective it will be. Forward Management Group, a Shenzhen-based golf course design company, said in its most recent annual research paper that the number of “core” golfers in China, who played at least eight rounds a year, had grown 11 percent year-over-year in 2010 to about 330,000. The country was host to 24 professional events, up from 18 in 2009. And developers opened the equivalent of 60 new 18-hole courses in 2010, bringing the total number of courses in the country to 490. Linda Lim, a native of Singapore and professor of business at the University of Michigan, says golf blends well with business in
would spur growth of the sport in China. It has been a reason for increased government financing of grassroots projects designed to stimulate interest, especially among juniors. “If golf is to grow globally, it’s got to come from Asia, and for that to happen it’s got to move from the privileged to the masses,” said Steve Mona, chief executive of the World Golf Foundation in Jacksonville, Fla. Shanshan Feng didn’t have the spotlight to herself for long. The week after her L.P.G.A. championship victory, 14-year-old Andy Zhang, also from Beijing, qualified for the men’s U.S. Open tournament in San Francisco. Though Zhang didn’t play well enough to survive the cut after two rounds, he was the youngest male ever to qualify for the elite event — another harbinger that Chinese golf is rising in a manner that Mao Zedong could never have imagined.
The year 2008 marked a financial turning point for the Ladies Professional Golf Association, and a defining moment in its relationship to a rising wave of talented Asian players.
Asian Women’s Golf
The onset of the global economic crisis arrived at a peak in L.P.G.A. history: $60 million in prize money at 34 tournaments. But that year, the L.P.G.A. commissioner unwittingly set off an uproar by warning Asian golfers on tour who spoke little or no English that they better learn in order to attract more sponsors and viewers. Or else. The ensuing backlash from Asian players and rights groups was explosive. Carolyn Bivens resigned as L.P.G.A. commissioner. Meantime the global financial cri-
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Asia, perhaps better than in the West. “It’s not about the game as much as the context of the game,” she said. “It can take four or five hours to play a round. If someone agrees to play with you, it means you are important. Besides, Asians are drawn to the environment of a golf course because they have so little of it in their everyday lives.” The U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, signed by President George W. Bush in 2003, was said to have been hatched after a midnight nine holes of golf in Brunei between then-President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the Asia-Pacific summit in 2000. The matchup turned heads across Asia. Later, Goh acknowledged that Clinton had played better than he that night. Perhaps that put the United States president in a mood to consider Goh’s request for a free trade pact. Chu predicted that the inclusion of golf in the 2016 Olympics
Q4.2012
sis began wiping out prize money and whole tournaments. Numbers fell by a third, victimized by tighter budgets and fewer big-money sponsorships. The sport’s prospects had turned gloomy indeed. Four years later, the L.P.G.A. is rebounding — and its connection to Asia through the women on the tour turns out to be one of its key assets. Michelle Wie, a Hawaiian of Korean ancestry, is sponsored by Kia and McDonald’s. “After sponsorships, our most important source has become the
sale of international TV rights,” said Mike Whan, who in 2009 was named L.P.G.A. commissioner, the eighth in its 62-year history. He declined to quantify the value of television rights, though many say new broadcast deals in Asia are worth tens of millions of dollars annually — driven by a new generation of Asian stars and their fans watching at home in Shanghai, Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City. For a tour whose membership once was almost entirely from the United States and Europe, Asia now
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