More public golf courses needed

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-03 10:53

"At present, among the 30,000 golf courses in the world, America has 20,000 and Japan has 2,000. China has only 500," Zhang Xiaoning, the director of the Ball Game Management Center in the General Administration of Sports, reported at the opening ceremony of a domestic golf competition in Beijing last month.

With golf seemingly becoming a game for the upper classes, there is a growing belief that more courses should be made available to sports fans from all walks of life. In particular, the middle classes are being targeted.

Han Liebao, director of the Golf Education and Research Department in Beijing Forestry University, believes the best number of golf courses in Beijing should be around 370, based on the assumption that every middle-class Beijinger among the city's 20 million population plays one game per week.

"There are about 60 golf courses in Beijing already and the number will hit 100 in two to three years," Han Liebao, director of the Golf Education and Research Department in Beijing Forestry University, said.

"Almost all the golf courses are run by private owners and few of them received investment from the government," Han added.

Because land resources are limited in Beijing, golf operators need to pay huge sums of money to buy up land.

And compared with a 5 percent tax levy on sports industry clubs, the government imposes a 23 percent tax on revenue earned from a golf club by ranking it as a member of the entertainment industry.

These two factors increase the costs needed to run a course and are reflected in their sky-high fees.

"In America, some parks are used as public golf courses and they only charge $20 per game," Han said. "Because they are run by the government, the costs are less."

Han believes it is necessary to move golf's image away from being a sport for the rich, "The government needs to build public golf courses to achieve this.

In other developed countries, the number of public courses far exceeds private courses."

"The Bird's Nest has publicly available basketball playgrounds set up by the government. Why not build some public golf courses too?" he asked.

In order to solve the land problem, Han suggests golf courses to be built on unusable lands such as dry river channels, barren mountains, and garbage dumps.

"Beijing doesn't need to worry about land issues. Along the Yongding River, Wenyu River and the wastelands in Daxin district, there is plenty of land available to build public golf courses," said Han before adding, "Proper use of those lands will also improve the environment."