{"id":915,"date":"2010-09-08T14:32:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T06:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parforchina.com\/?p=915"},"modified":"2016-05-16T11:58:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:58:10","slug":"presidents-cup-coming-to-china-in-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/presidents-cup-coming-to-china-in-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidents Cup coming to China in 2015?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, five-time British Open champion Peter Thomson <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/sport\/golf\/china-urged-to-join-the-presidents-cup-club-20100904-14v8j.html\">would sure like<\/a> to see it happen:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Thomson, who captained the International team to its only victory over the Americans in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pgatour.com\/tournaments\/presidentscup\/\">The Presidents Cup<\/a>, believes the time is right for the biennial series to be played in China and is urging its government and golfing officials to launch a bid to host the 2015 Cup. The five-times British Open champion, whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpl.eu.com\/company.php\">golf course design company<\/a> is active in China, is close to Chinese golfing officials and believes a successful bid can be launched. &#8220;They must start planning it now. The growth of golf in China is phenomenal and I believe the Chinese, by 2015, will be well represented in the International team. And China is wealthy enough to afford to host The Presidents Cup,&#8221; Thomson says. The US PGA Tour decides where the Cup is played, alternating between the US and an international country. It is believed to cost at least $US10 million to stage. Australia, South Africa and Canada have hosted the Cup, which next year returns to Royal Melbourne &#8211; where, in 1998, Thomson led the winning Internationals. His son Andrew, a former federal sports minister and now a lawyer in Beijing, is involved in lobbying the Chinese to bid for 2015.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>China has proven it can play host to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pgatour.com\/tournaments\/r489\/\">major events<\/a> that attract <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pgatour.com\/2010\/tournaments\/r489\/09\/07\/field-updates\/\">major stars<\/a> \u2014 so why not the Presidents Cup? Well, here&#8217;s one reason why I&#8217;d be skeptical of this happening anytime soon. From <a href=http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Presidents_Cup\">Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At the inaugural Presidents Cup in 1994, former U.S. President Gerald Ford was Honorary Chairman. Subsequent events saw former President George H. W. Bush, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard, then-President Bill Clinton, the former President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki, George W. Bush and the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper in the chair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In today&#8217;s political climate, I can&#8217;t see a current or former Chinese General Secretary or President or Premier (or any other national official) putting themselves anywhere near such a golf event. If that were to happen, it would signal a dramatic and historic shift in the Chinese government&#8217;s public attitude toward golf. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zhao_Ziyang\">last high-ranking Chinese official<\/a> to be open about his golfing habit spent the final 15 years of his life under house arrest. <\/p>\n<p>Maybe Barack Obama would fly to China to serve as Honorary Chairman? He seems to have no problem with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geoffshackelford.com\/homepage\/2010\/9\/6\/in-a-lot-of-ways-i-think-president-obama-could-help-with-the.html\">being seen on the links<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, five-time British Open champion Peter Thomson would sure like to see it happen: Thomson, who captained the International team to its only victory over the Americans in The Presidents Cup, believes the time is right for the biennial series to be played in China &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,7,120,121,122,10],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-china","tag-golf","tag-peter-thomson","tag-politics","tag-presidents-cup","tag-tournaments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2103,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/2103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}