{"id":232,"date":"2011-03-21T09:49:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T14:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomharack.com\/?p=232"},"modified":"2014-02-05T12:06:08","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T17:06:08","slug":"asia-not-golf-s-panacea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/golf\/232\/asia-not-golf-s-panacea","title":{"rendered":"Asia Not Golf\u2019s Panacea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greg Norman inspects Danang Golf Club. Photo: Tom Harack<\/p><\/div>\n

A couple of years ago, I walked the about-to-open Danang Golf Club, near the eponymous city on Vietnam\u2019s Central Coast, with Greg Norman, its designer. (Full disclosure: I was \u201ccovering\u201d the visit for Mandarin Media, the media relations firm representing the club.)<\/p>\n

Having just flown up from a project site in Indonesia, Norman was on his way to yet another prospect on Hainan Island, in China. He was stopping by Danang for a few hours of ceremonial document-signing, exchanging pleasantries with local officials, and one last tune-up spin around the new layout. Not surprisingly, then, he expressed bullishness about the part Asia will play in the future of golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game of golf has changed direction. The West has been taken over by the East,\u201d he stated. \u201cAnd that really started with the injection of golf into the Olympics. Asia and especially China are really going to lead the expansion of the game of golf at the grassroots level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norman reprised this endorsement of Asian growth at a subsequent PGA Merchandise Show, which also announced plans for an installment of the show in Asia.<\/p>\n

Not to be a wet blanket \u2013 and juxtaposed with the domestic market for new courses, just about anywhere looks and is fecund \u2013 but Asia will not be the solution to all the game\u2019s woes. Here\u2019s hoping I\u2019m wrong, but a year based in Saigon persuades me otherwise, because:<\/p>\n

\u2022 About the “grassroots” part<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> Wherever you place golf on the elitist-versus-egalitarian continuum now, there\u2019s no denying that the game\u2019s origins in Scotland included a solid Everyman tradition. No such tradition exists in Asia; it\u2019s a maturation phase they just skipped. China\u2019s 1.3 billion population isn\u2019t a very reliable predictor of participation; and the talk about a burgeoning middle class \u2013 as opposed to a class with suddenly substantially more money \u2013 is similarly misleading. Golf is still a way to announce that you\u2019ve arrived.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Back to the future<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> A related point is that Asian tastes in golf-course architecture flout progressive thinking out West when it comes to design. Here, we\u2019re talking about the brown look, reduced maintenance requirements, traditionalism, minimalism. In Asia, quality is defined by a manicured look, a garden concept.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A different environment<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> Course development in the West has its own environmental hurdles to clear, but at least a history of agrarian land-use and, often, communist influence are not among them. Governments seem to vacillate in their acceptance of the sport; and while construction of new courses in Asia is unlikely to come to a halt, this ambivalence continues to function as a braking mechanism.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It\u2019s always something<\/strong>.<\/em> Even for us non-geopoliticians, there\u2019s the strong sense that a by-product of the region\u2019s phenomenal growth will inevitably be some sort of social upheaval. While we hope for a mild version of the phenomenon, it\u2019s difficult to envision one that would promote the growth of golf.<\/p>\n

\u2022 An Olympian undertaking<\/strong>.<\/em> Speaking of which, the Brazil Olympics do represent a singular opportunity for exposing people to golf, but there\u2019s no guarantee the portrayal won\u2019t confirm rather than refute its image as a game of privilege. After all, televising the dressage hasn\u2019t resulted in an explosion of equestrianism.<\/p>\n

Asia will continue to infuse pro tours and other rarefied competitive golf strata with increasing numbers of top-rate players. The region will also see more high-quality, upscale development. All to the good. Whether this will produce a vastly different \u201cgolf scene\u201d is another matter. Unfortunately, nobody\u2019s immune to the vicissitudes of modern development, wherever it happens to be.<\/p>\n

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A couple of years ago, I walked the about-to-open Danang Golf Club, near the eponymous city on Vietnam\u2019s Central Coast,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1129,17],"tags":[90394,695,105881,90397,1016122,94,90392,284],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-a-cultural-thing","category-courses-and-travel","tag-danang-golf-club","tag-olympics","tag-brazil","tag-vietnams-central-coast","tag-golf","tag-china","tag-danang","tag-vietnam"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2011\/03\/danang_golf_club5-Dunes-GN.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}