China development on the skids, APGG reports

The Asia Pacific Golf Group, for years an unabashed promoter for Asian golf, has had a change of opinion regarding golf development in China.

The Singapore-based group, best known as the organizer the annual Asia Pacific Golf Summit, has concluded that China’s golf industry has hit the skids and won’t recover anytime soon. “The Chinese dragon seems to have lost its puff,” it writes in the June issue of Asian Club Business.

Such a reappraisal reflects the angst that’s become palpable as China’s golf business falls from its dizzying heights. In its anonymously written cover story, Asian Club Business says that golf course architects are “very disappointed with the pace of golf course development in China, or the lack of it.” It notes that fewer people went through the turnstiles at this year’s Beijing Golf Show, with “a big drop in registered attendance for architects and designers.” It quotes an unnamed architect as saying, “Golf in China has been awful for over two years now” and allows another to complain about “all the crappy Chinese courses built by bad designers that nobody wants to play on.”

Asian Club Business also has misgivings about the future of golf in China, due mostly to the industry’s poisonously close relationship with home builders. Like other analysts, the magazine fears that the nation’s real estate market “may collapse,” a prospect it believes would have dire consequences for golf development because “most golf courses in China are built as an excuse to develop real estate.”

“Golf development in China is rarely connected with a genuine interest to develop and grow the game,” the magazine notes.