This is from a story I wrote for the Toronto Star golf magazine on the explosion of golf in China…
You can see it in the way the mainland Chinese line up outside the Louis Vuitton shop in Kowloon. You can see it on Shenzen’s dusty roads, where cars are now far more common than the bikes that crowded China’s streets only a dozen years ago. People who suddenly come into wealth have a habit of releasing their pent-up shopping frustration by indulging in all the biggest gadgets and latest fads of the people they’ve seen enjoying the good life. One of the best ways to understand that mainland China has done a capitalistic about face is to gaze upon the wonder that is Mission Hills Golf Club. The owners of the 12-course complex about a half hour from Hong Kong in mainland China proudly bill Mission Hills as the largest golf centre in the world. And they’re not shy about letting you know.
“World’s number one golf resort,” screams one billboard outside the complex. “Home of Cindy Reid golf centre — world’s number one female instructor,” another sign states. “World’s biggest clubhouse,” a tour guide states as he takes visitors on a quick look-see through the 680,000 square foot Dongguan clubhouse, one of three clubhouses that serve the enormous, rolling complex.
The Cindy Reid training centre is a three-storey, 28,000 square-foot affair that has eight practice bays, each with four cameras to analyze a players’s swing. Many such centres have only two or three practice bays.
The complex takes up 20 square kilometres and 6,000 acres.
Mission Hills golf resort, China
It all sounds like a little bit — make that a lot — of hyperbole. But it’s mostly true. And it’s entirely one of the most astonishing golfing sights you’ll see.
There are 3,000 young women who serve as caddies on the courses every day. The three clubhouse staging areas where they all get ready to roll in the morning look like the cab stand outside Pearson Airport; a veritable sea of pale golf carts filled with chattering young caddies in their bright red and yellow uniforms and beekeeper-style helmets.
There are 10,000 members and 600,000 annual rounds. The complex features eight restaurants, 51 tennis courts, takes up the space of five Central Parks and has two golf academies, the Cindy Reid academy and a David Leadbetter facility.
Andre Dupont, who hails from Montreal and now works at Mission Hills, said the complex is “literally a city within a city. There are buses to bring the employees in to work. The clubhouse staging areas are amazing. It’s like no place on earth.”
“Everything in this country is big,” said golf architect Brian Curley, the genius behind most of the courses. “Not like, ‘I got a big belt buckle,’ Texas kind of big, but just big.”
Big you expect. But a first-time visitor is struck almost as much by the quality of the golf as the quantity.
There’s a new Pete Dye course complete with racy greens and Dye’s traditional railway ties. There’s a Jose Maria Olazabal course, where Mike Weir and fellow Canuck Wes Heffernan teed it up in the Mission Hills World Cup last November. There’s also the first Annika Sorenstam-designed course in the world, a lovely piece of work by Nick Faldo, an equally surprising layout from David Duval and a par-three course with replica holes from around the world.
Tenniel Chu, the executive director of Mission Hills, says golf was nowhere in China 20 years ago.
“Now, China is the fastest-growing golf market in the world,” said Chu, who, with his brother, Ken, the vice-chairman of the Mission Hills Group, attended Upper Canada College in Toronto and went to university in southern Ontario.
“International business in this part of China has skyrocketed, and so has interest in golf, which is such a social game. Chinese people love to do business on the golf course.”
“We tell people from Taiwan and Korea they can buy a place here and be five minutes from the largest golf resort in the world.”
“Some call golf the green opium,” said Ken Chu. “That’s how badly some people have become addicted to the game.”
For those willing to spend enough, you can get access to one of the private floors in the Guanluan clubhouse tower. Each has private locker rooms for VIP foursomes, with their own dedicated elevator and private massage rooms and eating areas.
What might be as stunning as the golf courses and the three clubhouses themselves are that there was no golf in sight in these parts 13 years ago.
Golf architect Brian Curley, who was raised in Pebble Beach, Calif., and clearly absorbed some fine lessons about what makes a good golf course, said he remembers arriving at the Mission Hills site on a Thursday to look at building the second through sixth courses; the first being the Jack Nicklaus-designed World Cup course that opened in 1994.
“On Friday, I started messing with some drawings. We went over some things on the weekend. On Monday, the bulldozers came in.”
It’s an experience that could never be replicated in Canada or the U.S., where environmental concerns have been known to stop entire projects.
Curley shakes his head in amazement.
“We moved 25 million cubic metres of earth,” he said, flashing through a series of slides that show entire mountains being taken down and huge valleys filled in to create the topography he wanted.
One worker who didn’t want his name mentioned said one of the big advantages at Mission Hills were low costs.
“Labour is a fraction of what it would be in North America,” he said. “And with so many workers, you can do in a few weeks what might take a year in the U.S. or Canada.”
“Pinehurst added their eighth course on their 100th anniversary,” said Mission Hills vice-president Valen Tan. “Our 10th course came on our 10th anniversary. That’s our model.”
The story that goes around golf circles is that the first “name” course in China was an Arnold Palmer affair where they went to great expense to bring in expensive irrigation equipment, only to find that someone without much golf sense installed it above ground. It may not be true, but it hasn’t taken the Chinese long to figure out how to build a world-class resort.
There are now nearly 400 courses in China. There’s supposed to be a government imposed moratorium on new ones, partly because of environmental concerns, but there’s not much evidence of it. The room goes quiet if you ask the Chu family about it, but it appears they’ve set their sights on major expansion on Hainan island, where Curley is setting up office and where Chinese tourists flock for an island that’s as close as China gets to the tropics.
Tenniel Chu said they’re going after not only Chinese and Korean tourists but a world-wide audience.
“People have played all over Europe and North America. It’s time for a new taste and a new experience.
“Before this, nobody ever thought of China as a golf destination. But that’s changing.”
So is the quality of the players.
“When we first built it, we thought, ‘We can’t make the fairways wide enough. We can’t make the courses easy enough,’ ” said Chu. “But the quality of play is improving exponentially. At some point China will have a big impact player. It’s only a matter of time.”
Mission Hills prides itself on doing everything first-rate. Food is no exception. You can get monster Asian or North American breakfasts during the day and at night dine on authentic Italian gnocchi, top-notch sushi or dig into a perfectly cooked hamburger with cheese and bacon. Or you can zero in on Shanghai cuisine and try bee pupa or wok-fried frog or tuck into delicious mushroom caps sauteed with a dash of soya and ginger.
“People who come here expect the best food in the world,” said Tenniel Chu. “I think we give it to them.”
In addition to the fine meals, there are the requisite spas for all sorts of Asian massages. Some of them offer lovely ginger tea to sip on before and after your treatment.
“We’re pioneeering in the field by introducing family elements, such as spas and other recreational opportunities,” explained Ken Chu. “There were maybe 10 courses in China when Missions Hills was built but they only had golf. We offer golf for business, golf for entertainment, golf for leisure and golf for family.”
Rooms are available at a couple of locations on the property, including the Savannah condominium project near the Ozaki course. The rooms are a little on the spare side for western tastes, but they’re fairly luxurious and quite comfortable.
If you fancy a home in the area, they’ll be happy to sell you one of the hundreds of monster homes that are popping up alongside several of the courses. Some are absolutely astounding, with indoor waterfalls and spas and all-white interiors or furnishings from what look like the Liberace line of taseteful decorating. Muzak is piped into the streets from overhead speakers, and there are armed guards at the front gate.
As for the giant Guangdong clubhouse, it has gorgeous fixtures and marble floors that make Holt Renfrew look like Wal-Mart.
“No matter what you tell people or what they see on TV, they can’t comprehend what we have here,” said Tenniel Chu. “People arrive and they all say, ‘I can’t believe it.’ ”
