There are no Chinese golfers participating in The Masters this week, and perhaps that is fitting. It’s already been a rough spring for “the rich man’s game” in China. On March 30, Chinese authorities announced the closure of 66 “illegal” golf courses — roughly 10% of all courses in the country — in an […]
In this day and age, we’ve come to expect to see images of U.S. presidents gracing gossip websites and the covers of tabloid newspapers. But rarely, as it was recently, is golf at the heart of the discussion. After breaking briefly from a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to publicly address the savage beheading of […]
I’ve got a column in the July 7, 2014, issue of Golf World magazine. It’s called “China’s Quandary: Big Country Has a Small, Complicated Interest in the Game,” and unfortunately it’s not available online. You can, however, buy a digital edition on Google Play’s Newsstand for 99 cents.
“You need to hide,” the villager whispered urgently. “Government officials have arrived.” I was whisked away through a maze of shanties, trees and rubble, and finally placed inside a crudely-made shed where my only companions were discarded coconut husks and a rooster. Through a gap in the wall I spotted men wearing eyeglasses and white […]
Mamta Badkar writes: The crackdown on corruption has been a hallmark of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s reign. Increasing corruption in the party was seen as one of the biggest threats to its survival, and Xi has made it clear that he will stomp it out. So it isn’t surprising that top officials in China are […]
Short on elite players but (very) long on perks, the Asian Amateur is a bold experiment by two of the game’s most powerful entities.
Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama cruised to a win in the second Asian Amateur Championship, earning a berth in the 2011 Masters.
A visit to a construction site reveals a country where golf course building is both banned and booming — and where hope competes with fear every day.
Why did Beijing bulldoze a tournament golf course?
Sorry for the silence of late — various assignments and deadlines demanded my attention. I’ve got a break in the action at the moment and wanted to pass along something that, although a couple months old now, I think is still worth a post. Less than a week after the release of my Financial Times […]
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