|
|
Tilbake
til første side Debattsiden
Golfreiser
 Tiger
Woods er i Kina - et land på full fart framover også innen golf
02.11 Kina og golf:
Er landet på full fart inn på
golfarenaen?
Kina har hatt en dramatisk utvikling på golfområdet de senere årene. Fra å ha
vært en ikke-golfnasjon seiler Kina nå opp som en av de store. Eller er det
slik?
Med den store økonomiske framgangen Kina har hatt de siste årene, har golfsporten
kommet for fullt i dette landet.
Nå arrangerer landet en av verdens største golfturneringer med hele
verdenseliten på plass.
Det kan være interessant å lese litt mer om den kinesiske gramgangen.
Tim Maitland har lagd en artikkel som er vel verdt å lese:
Is China Coming?
Addressing China’s emergence into the golfing world is not a question of “if”;
it’s a question of “how fast?” Tim Maitland reports.
There are few definitive truths one can utter about a nation of China’s massive
scale. There are however some useful generalisations about the “Middle Kingdom”
especially in the last 10 or 20 years. Firstly, it tends to develop in whatever
it is doing, far quicker than almost all outside predications. Secondly, China,
just as it did with its “socialist market economy”, tends to find its own way.
The same broad brush strokes apply for golf.
Passerte Japan i 2. kvartal
Just as surpassing Japan’s gross domestic product in the second quarter of 2010
confirmed China’s status as an economic power, China’s position as a global
tournament host has also been confirmed. It took just one edition of the HSBC
Champions as a World Golf Championships event to complete a process started by
the Volvo China Open, the first truly international Chinese professional event
in 1995, to convince most of the naysayers that Shanghai was going to work. One
of the little asterisks – whether it should count as an official PGA Tour win -
was quickly removed, and this year it did… for the tour’s existing members at
least.
That it happened faster than anyone imagined is beyond issue. As world number
one Lee Westwood exclaimed recently: “It’s achieved a high-profile status
very quickly, amazingly quickly when you look at other tournaments and how much
history they have before they achieve that kind of fame.”
Tre viktige faktorer
Westwood also neatly plucked out three factors that indicate that Shanghai’s
growing importance on the global golf calendar – this is after all the event
that Tiger describes as “the crowning jewel of all of Asian golf” – is unlikely
to do anything but continue its upward trend
“The Chinese economy is probably the strongest economy in the world right now,
it’s a good tournament played a great tournament, and it’s a great golf course;
that’s really all you can ask for,” Westwood said.
The point seems to have been taken on board across the board in America, where
the credit crunch closed courses and the stagnation in terms of the numbers of
golfers is increasingly being seen as a decline. Couple that with the fact that
a very American golfer like Nick Watney currently sports the logos of Japanese
luxury carmaker Lexus and German fashion brand Hugo Boss and you’re dealing with
a very different, worldly generation of American players.
“The markets here and in Europe aren’t growing and are maybe even shrinking. I
kind of figured that the way that China was going economically and
technologically I thought that golf would follow, but it seemed to happen very
quickly,” said Watney, sounding convincingly like a CEO himself.
“A World Golf [Championships event] in China, I think, is great for the game.
Obviously, Asia is booming right now so we need to follow that. When the best
players continue to show up that validates that it is a real event. When they
win it shows that they are taking it seriously and it’s a good golf course if
the top names do well.”
A roll of honour that working backwards from 2009 goes
Mickelson-Garcia-Mickelson-Yang would seem to illustrate Watney’s point rather
well.
The addition of the PGA Tour’s first foray into South East Asia (the limited
field CIMB Asia Pacific Classic took place at The Mines Resort in Malaysia the
week before Shanghai) is further indication that China’s place on the
world-class calendar is beyond reproach. It also signals that the battle for
position either side of the first week of November is truly on with the Barclays
Singapore Open competing with the JB Were (Australian) Masters as the quality of
field across the region skyrockets.
“To go over there for one week is kinda silly, so I don’t see why guys won’t go
over there and play more,” Watney explains.
“There’ll be more than one or two events. You have a huge market over there and
if it’s growing and wants golf you’d be a fool to not do it. I think it will
only grow.”
That the number of golf courses in China will continue to grow as well is also
beyond doubt. Despite a long-standing moratorium at central government level
making permission for new layouts harder to get, China has found a Chinese
solution and, loathe as one is to make broad sweeping statements, many of the
world’s top golf course designers are there and they’re not there on holiday.
The question now is how? To understand the way golf is evolving there it helps
to think of golf as a feature, like an elaborate marble fountain; a centerpiece
to a real estate lifestyle business. That will only continue; Imperial Springs
near Guangzhou, which is close to completion, will make all the palatial
developments that have preceded it look, in comparison, for want of a better
word… a bit Caddyshack.
Mission Hills
Among the more promising developments for those of us who can’t let go of our
western concepts of “sport” being something more in a Corinthian way, isn’t the
massive new Mission Hills project on Hainan Island, although that points the way
to where the world’s next big tourist magnet will be, but the low-grade
locally-designed tracks that form a part of the equally enormous but
little-known Nanshan International Golf Club in Shandong province. It is also
worth remembering that virtually all of the members clubs allow daily-fee golf
and that as China’s middle class grows wealthier the sport is going to become
more affordable to them.
However, arguing that golf in China needs to trickle down the societal layers to
reach the masses before we can address the next question – where China’s stars
are going to come from – is made redundant by Korea’s example.
Gode spillere
The Land of the Morning Calm has produced if not one of the greatest generations,
certainly the single greatest year group of women golfers the world has ever
seen without them ever seeing golf courses regularly. Shin Ji-Yai, Kim In-Kyung,
Choi Na-Yeon – the so-called “Dragon Ladies” – honed their games on the top tier
of Korea’s multi-story urban driving ranges not on the drastically expensive,
tee-off-at-5 a.m.-oversubscribed golf courses.
As well as proving that access to courses isn’t critical, Korea also provides
possibly the greatest wisdom when it comes to answering where China’s Woods,
Mickelson, Wie or Miyazato is going to emerge from. For the sake of finding a
fancy name for it, we could call it the “Shin-Park paradigm” after two of
Korea’s most recent women’s Major winners, Shin Ji-Yai and Park In-Bee. Ji-Yai
grew up as a golfer in Korea, winning on the KLPGA as a high-school student in
2005. In-Bee went to the States at the age of 12 to do her growing there.
The answer to the Shin-Park puzzle in China is probably both. The clues, when it
comes to looking into the future, ironically, weren’t be found during the week
of the WGC-HSBC Champions but the week before. That’s when the year-long HSBC
National Junior Championship had its own version of the Champions – a
winners-only finale at the Sino-Bay Country Sports Club located in the Shanghai
Chemical Industry Park outside Shanghai.
Junior
In its fourth year, the HSBC National Junior Championship passed a notable
landmark; the entry list at Sino-Bay took the number of children to have
benefited from an early taste of tournament golf past one thousand. The HSBC
China Junior Golf Program has now introduced over 8,000 children to the sport
through its summer and winter camps and 200,000 children have swung a club for
the first time through the schools scheme which introduces golf into the PE
curriculum at primary and middle schools.
Første bane i 1984
If you’re asking yourself whether China’s fledgling golf industry – remembering
that the first modern course only opened in 1984 – is mature enough to grow
future champions yet, it’s worth heeding the reaction of PGA Tour pro Jason
Dufner after he’d given a clinic for some of the younger juniors before last
year’s WGC-HSBC Champions.
“The basics were unbelievable. Some of them were a little limited because of
their size but I think where their age range is it was pretty incredible for
what they were doing, from what I’ve seen,” Dufner said, comparing the
10-12-year-old kids he saw favourably with their American counterparts.
“I think they’re way ahead from what I’ve seen. I think in 10 years time there
might be a lot of Chinese players on the PGA and LPGA Tours. I think some of the
better players that I saw would hold their own if they went to the US… they
would be very, very competitive against their age bracket for sure.”
A more cautionary note was sounded recently by Asian Tour Executive Chairman Kyi
Hla Han who questioned whether the tournament structure was in place to grow
China’s male professionals. Han might have a point, but reports of his comments
also failed to acknowledge the existence of the China PGA Tour as a successor to
the Omega China Tour, which is far less visible than its predecessor outside of
the Chinese language, and that at the time of writing the number of professional
men’s tournaments in China in 2010 looked likely to match those of the previous
two seasons.
Kvinner før menn
The probability is that the women will come before the men, or, remembering how
Jenny Feng Shanshan came from nowhere as a teenager to earn her LPGA card, the
girls will come before the boys. The reality is for every Matteo Manassero, Rory
McIlroy and Ryo Ishikwawa there are many more young female golfers who have
proved competitive at an early age at the pinnacle of the women’s game. The
domestic tour – the China LPGA – is in its second year and aims at staging 10
tournaments annually and Zhang Na’s four wins on the Japan LPGA in 2007 have
established an alternative roadmap to the American route.
It’s already been suggested that the girls’ work ethic exceeds that of the
Chinese boys by one high-profile overseas coach. And while one makes
generalisations with trepidation, perhaps also the Asian serenity, what
long-time LPGA caddie Shaun Clews refers to as a “certain calmness”, that the
Korean stars benefit from, will also serve the Chinese girls too.
Whether it will be the regular winners on the HSBC National Junior Championship
(girls like Apple Yang Jiaxin, Lu Yue or, of the younger ones, Lucy Shi Yuting
and boys like Zhang Jin or Zhou Tian) or those following the Park In-Bee route
(Cindy Feng Yueer and the unrelated Feng Simin are both prominent on the
American junior circuit) or one of the young men going through the US Colleges
(Hu Mu, Wang Minghao or Han Ren) that will arrive first, only time will tell.
Simin, originally from Beijing, is already an AJGA Rolex All-American while
Yueer, from the city of Shenzhen in China’s golfing heartland Guangdong province,
rates in the top on Golfweek’s junior ranking despite being a couple of years
younger than her rivals, but then as a counterpoint Feng Shanshan was hardly on
anyone’s radar outside Guangzhou when she went to the LPGA’s Q School. Lucy Shi,
at the tender age of 12, looks like a carbon copy of Shin Ji-Yai when she was
still a teenager, and although a lot can go wrong in the next six years, Shi
looks more likely to star rather than just feature on the LPGA.
The reality is that all these players are going to get greater opportunities
because of golf’s entry to the Olympics in 2016. Olympic status has moved the
China Golf Association from a cul-de-sac (it was until a couple of years ago
lumped in with and effectively financially supporting sports like cricket and
snooker in the so-called “small ball” section) onto the six-lane superhighway of
China’s sports ministry, The State General Administration of Sports.
Henrik Stenson: - Mange gode spillere
Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, who might not claim to be a China “expert”, might have
hit the nail on the head with his broad, sweeping statement about the future of
Chinese golf.
“We’ve seen some strong players emerging. Once they put their mind to golf we’ll
see more,” he stated. “The focus now – because of the Olympics – it’s just going
to keep on working away and it’s going to be interesting to follow these next
ten years.”
So the answer when you ask whether China is coming is an emphatic yes. The
question that remains is just where from, how many and how fast?
Kinas milepæler
1984 First modern golf course: Chung Shan Hot Spring, opens in Zhongshan,
Guangdong province
1985 May 24th. First governing body: the China Golf Association is
established
1986 January. First “international” tournament: Chung Shan hosts the
Chung Shan Cup, featuring foreign players but not recognised by any outside
sanctioning bodies the Pro-Am event is hailed in China the first international
tournament.
1990 September/October. First big event: The Asian Games golf tournament
is held at Beijing Golf Club, Shunyi District. The Asian Games itself was the
first large-scale international sports event to be held in the People’s Republic
of China.
1994 October. First medals: At the Asian Games in Hiroshima Zhang Lianwei
wins an individual silver medal behind Kaname Yokoo, while China’s women’s team
claims bronze.
1994 April. First professionals: Zheng Wengen and John Xiao Chenghan are
among a handful of golfers to become the first Chinese professionals when they
pass a newly-introduced CGA exam.
1995. First domestic tour: The Volvo China Tour, China’s first domestic
circuit, consisted of four 36-hole tournaments.
1995 April. First official international pro tournament: The Volvo China
Open in Beijing (Beijing International Golf Club) is won by Raul Fretes of
Paraguay. Total prize money was US$400,000.
1997 April. First Chinese player to win an international tournament:
Cheng Jun is victorious at the Volvo China Open in Beijing.
2001 November. First visit by a world number one: Tiger Woods makes his
first trip to China, an exhibition at Mission Hills near Shenzhen in Guangdong
2003 January. First Chinese win in a European Tour event: Zhang Lianwei
wins the co-sanctioned Caltex Masters in Singapore.
2004 First Chinese player in a Major championship: Zhang Lianwei receives
an invitation to the Masters.
2004 May. First Chinese golf world record: Mission Hills entered into
Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest golf club after its expansion to
180 holes.
2005 November. First time to host Asia’s leading tournament: With US$5m
prize money, the HSBC Champions, then Asia’s richest tournament, debuts in
Shanghai. The inaugural tournament is won by English Ryder Cup star David Howell.
2007 First fully-integrated junior development scheme: The HSBC China
Junior Golf Program and HSBC National Junior Championships are launched.
2007 First Chinese to win Asian Tour’s Order of Merit: Liang Wenchong
clinches the title with nine top-ten finishes including a win at the Singapore
Masters.
2007 First Chinese to join American college circuit: Han Ren enrolls on a
golf scholarship at Indiana University
2008 July. First weekend play in a Major: Liang Wenchong makes the cut at
the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.
2008 November. First impact on the Official World Rankings: Sergio Garcia
moves up to number two after winning the HSBC Champions. It’s the first time an
Asian event has had such a profound effect on the global standings.
2009 April. First Women’s Tour: The China Golf Association announces the
birth of the China LPGA Tour. The circuit will have strong links with the Orient
Golf chain, playing the majority of the events on their courses.
2009 Asia’s first WGC event: WGC status is awarded to the HSBC Champions
in April, making it indisputably Asia’s single-most important tournament. The
event in November features Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson playing in the same
tournament for the first time in Asia. Paired together in the leading group on
the final day, Mickelson triumphs.
2010 First Impact On World Number One: Four players - Lee Westwood, Tiger
Woods, Martin Kaymer and Phil Mickelson – arrived in Shanghai for the 2010
WGC-HSBC Champions, knowing a good week would make the number one in the world.
No Asian tournament had ever impacted the very top of the Official World Golf
Ranking.
20??: China’s first world number one:
ENDS
Tilbake
til første side
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her finner du
DEBATTSIDEN
Her diskuterer du golf
Si din mening!!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Golfsiden.com - Norges største uavhengige nettsted for golf -
Norges store golfportal
Les mer