Free image courtesy of anekoho/FeeDigitalPhotos.net
We’ve seen what China can do when it sets its sights on competing in an Olympic sport. Well, get ready for Chinese golfers to start have an impact in the decades to come. With the Olympics adding golf the Chinese are fully engaged in developing young talent. Meanwhile the country is hosting high profile tournaments with large cash prizes that are luring golf’s elite. But behind the scenes the Chinese are hard at work.
If it seems strange that China should be the locus for so much high-caliber golf, get used to it. By the year 2020, when golf will make its second modern-era Olympic appearance at the Tokyo games, after Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Chinese players will likely be serious contenders for medals. The world’s pro tours will almost certainly be populated by Chinese stars, and China’s Hainan Island, on the same latitude as Hawaii, could be the world’s busiest golf destination.
The Chinese are serious. “You know how the Chinese love gold medals,” semi-joked Ken Chu, chief executive of the Mission Hills Group, which so far has built 22 golf courses in China, 10 of them on Hainan Island, and hosts more than 500 amateur and junior amateur tournaments a year. Guan and the country’s latest prodigy, Ye Wocheng, who was 12 when he played in a European Tour event in May, train at Mission Hills.
“Golf is a game that the Chinese believe we can excel at, because it’s more an IQ game than a muscular game,” Chu said. “I mean, how often do you get a Yao Ming (the former 7-foot-6 NBA star) becoming a national hero? But golf, no matter what height you are or how much you weigh, is still mostly mental.”
Pro golfers should welcome this challenge, as the amount of money in this sport will skyrocket with the Chinese getting involved. We’ve seen golf become very popular in other Asian countries so we’ll probably see the same here with the Olympic powers behind this push.
