The Scots and the Dutch have been arguing for well over 200 years about which of their nations invented the game of golf. However, the historian Wei Tai wrote in 943AD that a sport called Chuiwan (from the words “Chui,” meaning hitting, and “Wan,” meaning small ball) had been played in China from as early as the 7th century.
The theory of golf’s Asiatic origins continues with the suggestion that the Mongols brought this ancient version of golf to Europe during their invasions of the 12th and 13th centuries, along with a set of rules that bore an uncanny resemblance to those first formulated by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews some 500 years later.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty (1644), all mention of Chuiwan or Buda had disappeared from contemporary chronicles. Golf reappeared on the radar with the 1889 founding of the Hong Kong Golf Club, which is home to three layouts at Fanling in the New Territories, the northern corner of the former British province.
No doubt golf courses were built at Beijing and Shanghai to accommodate colonial visitors during the early 1900s, but records of such constructions were not kept. Eventually all evidence of the game disappeared under the dead weight of the communist pall, which did not begin to lift until the mid-1980s. When it did, the catalysts that hastened an end to the golfing (and cultural) blackout were Henry Fok, one of the richest men in the world at the time, and Arnold Palmer.
In the early 1980s, Fok, a Hong Kong tycoon and one of the political architects of modern China, approached Mr. Palmer to design the first golf course in post-Revolutionary China. The product of their union was Chung Shan Hot Springs Golf Club. Located near Chungshan City in Guangdong Province in southern China, it officially opened nearly a quarter of a century ago.
In the intervening 20-plus years there has been a remarkable boom in golf-course construction in China. Current estimates put the number of courses in the world’s fastest-growing economy at more than 400, with perhaps double that number under construction.
One of them, Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, is already the biggest golf resort in the world with 12 different 18-hole courses now open for play, all of them designed by superstars of the modern game.
As recently as the mid-1990s, it was estimated that barely 1,000 Chinese nationals played golf. Now that figure is comfortably in excess of one million.
Mr. Palmer, famed for his entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen as well as his ability both as a player and a course designer, is therefore acutely aware of his unique position in China's golfing history.
He acknowledges, too, the huge part played by Fok, who died in 2006 at age 83, and the hundreds of Chinese laborers who used rakes, shovels and their bare hands to fashion a championship golf course out of a featureless tract of land.
“We were contacted by the Henry Fok organization in Japan,” recalled Mr. Palmer. “Mr. Fok had seen our work in Japan and asked me if I would consider designing him a championship course in mainland China. I said: ‘Yes, we would be delighted to.’”
“The land was one half flat and one half severe mountain slope. All of the features of the course were designed. It was not what you would call a great or natural golf course site, and it was a pretty tough build because it involved so much manual labour. We are very proud of how it all came together to create what now looks like a very natural site.”
Mr. Palmer met Fok to discuss the history-making project, and made various site visits during the construction period.
“The fact that it was part of history was one of the reasons I agreed to design the course. As it has turned out, we really did lay the cornerstone for golf in mainland China and we are all very proud of that,” said Mr. Palmer, with obvious pride.
“I met Mr. Fok on two occasions. We had a lunch and a dinner together. He was a great host and a true visionary for the game in Asia. Mr. Fok's construction of Chung Shan golf course was a very high financial risk endeavour, but its success has always made it the tycoons' club in South China.”
Mr. Palmer remains in awe of the workers who built the course without the benefit of heavy equipment or much knowledge of the game.
“The course turned out much better than I expected. It was built by hand. They had no equipment — bulldozers, trucks, tractors or loaders,” he said. “Imagine for a moment that this project was built by men and women using shovels and rakes, working on a task they had never undertaken before.
“I played the course and was more than satisfied with the putting surfaces and the strategy being asked of a player on each of the holes. The golf course has a very nice rhythm.”
Beijing
Palmer’s second Chinese course is as daunting in terms of work, but this time at least the workers had the benefit of proper equipment. Still under construction, The Cascades sits 20 minutes due east of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square with its first 18 holes (of a 27-hole design) now open to play. Incredibly, 2.5 million cubic meters of earth had to be moved to transform the flat site into rolling hills. Now, complete with lakes and dramatic waterfalls, everyone familiar with the original lay of the land is simply stunned by the metamorphosis that has taken place. Moreover, in and around Beijing, there is simply no other course like it. With the first 18 measuring 7,400 yards, look for the capital city’s future major tournaments to be hosted here.
Throughout the course, elevated tees provide golfers a good perspective on each hole, and things get rolling straight away. Upon leaving the clubhouse, the player is swept along a magnificent pathway that “floats” on pedestals above a 20-meter long parabolic shaped waterfall. The effect is immediate, stimulating and refreshing. It signals your entry into a garden of golfing delights. Like any good opening hole, the bunking, movement in the shaping, and character of the putting surface on the first are restrained but still provide an early indication as to the design of the remainder of the course. Hole No.6 is a 634-yard, par 5 that looks like you’re driving to Tibet. Hole No.9 is a 197-yard par 3 that plays downhill to a long narrow green, flanked on the right by a lake with elegant rock outcroppings. The tees on the 9th afford the golfer expansive views of the entire front nine, and the way they cascade down the edges of the massive waterfall feature makes this hole one of the signature designs of the course. Hole No.11 is a 563-yard par 5 where China’s largest and most challenging sand bunker complex first snakes its way into the fairways and greens of the back nine holes. Nicknamed “The Intimidator,” this huge hazard starts at the first landing area of the 11th and then wraps and coils its way through the fairways and greens of the next three holes. The majestic scale of the eleventh is readily apparent; a tee shot with a slight draw will carry deep into the landing area due to the dramatic falling gradient. Club selection for the second shot must be thoughtful and accurate to give any chance of a birdie on this hole. The elevated green is guarded by deep sand bunkering in front. All pin placements on this hole are difficult to putt as the surface of the green has so much subtle movement. The par 3 No.17 hole measures a modest 131 yards. However, the green sits on an island and, depending on the tees you play from, lies between 20 and 30 feet below the player. Wind and water are the big hazards, and the short length only makes club selection and line of flight more difficult. Behind the green is a line of mature trees that block the wind on half the green and permit its full impact to be felt on the remainder. Given that all tee shots will be made with lofted clubs, no matter how well struck, the line of flight will only be partially under the control of the player. A gust of wind or a sudden swirl means that shots that start out good will often become wayward. So much so that some consider the sand bunker to the left front of the green more of a bailout than a hazard. Many rounds will be saved or demolished on this pretty but tricky little hole.
The 18th is all risk and reward. It’s a 448-yard hole, but the green lies 340 yards away — if you are willing to attempt to fly the water that guards the hole from tee to green. The best pros will be able to drive the green or bite off most of the dogleg. The hole is set up to tempt the player to reach further than they might grasp; play a safe tee shot to the generous landing area and you can capture a par or even a birdie, go for it and you will be a hero or a zero. One thing is for sure: as you tap in your final putt you will look around and marvel at the amazing golf course that surrounds you. This is what golf is all about and it guarantees a golfing experience like no other in Beijing.
Kunming
Moving southwest from the capital, bustling Kunming in Yunnan province is potentially a golf destination that could one day match the might of Mission Hills. One of the reasons for this is that Arnold Palmer Design Company has begun construction on what may become the most memorable 18 holes in the region.
Kunming is already home to Spring City Golf and Lake Resort, which has two championship courses: the Mountain designed by Nicklaus, and the Lake by Robert Trent Jones Jr. With the addition of the mountain-styled, Palmer-designed Kunming Golf & Country Club, the area is even more certain to attract visitors, and plaudits, due to the quality of its golf.
Mr. Palmer’s layout embraces a stretch of land where the imagination can run wild. The opening hole gets your attention right away, and the tees on holes 3 and 4 cling to the side of a canyon with greens perched 300 feet above the lake. Only 20 minutes from downtown Kunming, this course certainly possesses the “wow” factor so beloved of Mr. Palmer’s former design partner, the late Ed Seay.
The drama is contained in the many peaks, cliffs, canyons, lakes and streams that help form this challenging 7,214-yard test of golf. In Mr. Seay’s words, “the holes were there, we just had to go find them, refine them and beautify what nature gave us to work with. We did a lot of route plans but we finally found 18 great holes of golf that minimized earth moving while taking the golfer through all the natural beauty the site had to offer.”
Lakes have been added and there has been considerable strategic shaping of the terrain, but these additions and refinements complement the rare beauty of the site and look as natural as the vast areas of the course that remain untouched. Kunming’s temperate climate and modest altitude allow for jade-green, cool-weather grasses on the fairways and ultra-fast, bent-grass greens on this links style layout.
When the XXIX Olympiad unfolds in Beijing this year, visitors from all over the world will be there — including the Dutch and the Scots. Will they care about or even acknowledge Wei Tai and the game of Chuiwan, or will they be too busy arguing with each other about golf’s European origins? Whatever they decide to believe, it’s certain golf in China will press on regardless with Palmer and his design team leading the way, just as they have from the modern rebirth of the Chinese game.
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Palmer attends USGA grand opening
On June 3, 2008, Arnold Palmer will attend the USGA Museum and Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History grand re-opening ceremony.
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