More public golf courses needed

"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.