The Addiction that Threatens Asia

Eric Ellis, Hong Kong

02/11/1994

MOLOTOV CHEN of Taipei is in no doubt what poses the biggest threat to Asia's future. North Korea's Kim Il Sung threatening nuclear Armageddon on South Korea? Exploding stockmarkets? China's Balkanisation?

All just Mickey Mouse, according to Molotov, who has lobbed his cocktail at the royal and ancient, noble game of golf. Chen - with a name like Molotov we assume he's a Mister - felt compelled to warn recently, via Taipei's China Times, that Taiwanese "citizens face a 20th Century scourge worse than AIDS".

"It's called golf and it can be transmitted through unprotected social intercourse with other players," wrote Chen.

"Golf addiction is also worse than that most expensive of addictions, cocaine. For starters, you need a lot of cash and I mean a whole crateload."

(Chen has obviously been to Hong Kong's Discovery Bay Golf Club where to step anywhere near the sub-standard course requires parting with the $HK equivalent of $A300 for 18 holes green fees and if you didn't bring clubs, shoes or balls it's another $A60).

Molotov was unmoved by the demonstration last month of a hundred or so Taiwanese millionaires, assisted by a rent-a-crowd of caddies and sundry golf shop employees who almost brought Taipei to a halt.

Angered by a Ministry of Education - yes, the Ministry of Education -decision to close 17 illegal golf clubs, the 12,000-strong gallery descended on the Ministry to spray a few shots at one of the few Taiwanese departments not run by golfers.

Even by newly democratic Taiwan's standard of eclectic activism, the mob made a curious sight.

Led by middle-aged men in golf hats piloting four electric carts, complete with a full set of clubs, it marched six and seven abreast down Taipei's streets sporting signs in Chinese that read "Don't Tarnish the Little White Ball" and "Why is Golfing a Crime?" The Ministry remains unmoved.

The event underlined the fact that with the relaxed exception of The Philippines, golf in Asia is not a sport. It's a grave politico-corporate event with dark fascist undertones.

This is the place where every aspect of the game is coated with thousand-dollar bills and share certificates, amplified and put on public display for the enhancement of one's social status.

Improve your golf swing? Score? Why? Lower your handicap? What's that?

At one level, Asian golf is not about playing, it's about being seen to play and then being seen with important people disinterested in the pursuit of sporting excellence.

It's far more important for the clubhouse that you paid $US1 million to sit in - the higher the better - to have a tweedy, smoky English club ambience and for your clubs to be the most expensive Mizunos in the pro shop, even if you rarely use them or, moreover, know how to.

If as a keen golfer you happen to play up to a group who actually make it to the course, grit your Western teeth and bear it. They simply will not let you play through.

Asians are by and large, er, new to the game and the usual conventions of course etiquette in the main do not apply.

Indeed, as this hacker discovered after parting with $A350 for a bad day at Hong Kong's Discovery Bay club, it pays to allocate six to seven hours for a round that even on a busy day at Yarra Bend might have taken four.

Stuck for 15 holes behind an expensive-looking Korean foursome who insisted on marking 12cm putts and taking three practise swings every shot, I casually inquired if our twosome might play through as we had appointments that evening a long ferry ride away.

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP," the group leader shrieked, demanding of the slow-play marshall that we be immediately ejected from the course, in compensation for his lost face.

Now, in the West marshalls are usually burly types who brook no nonsense from errant slowcoaches. At "Disco Bay", they tend to be meek Filipinos, guest workers from a country that generally doesn't figure in the hierarchical Asian socio-economic loop.

As the aggrieved leader tried to eject us from the course for our bad manners, the marshall brokered a typically Filipino solution, smilingly apologising to both the Koreans and us chafing Westerners. We finished our round, the Koreans picked up their game and we all returned to Hong Kong drinking beer.

It's much more fun playing in China, where a dozen courses have sprung up since the now disgraced former Premier Zhao Zhiyang got swinging in the early 1980s.

Most of the courses are clustered in the south around the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, their fairways, or more correctly the roughs, populated by swaggering Hongkongers ingratiating themselves with bemused communist party hackers.

Chungshan Hot Springs Golf Club is the granddaddy of the them all. The honour board here is a roll-call of Hong Kong's business Who's Who mixing it with China's party elite.

The $A1 million membership buys weekend business contacts and weekday market share but Chungshan's redeeming feature is its 200-strong caddy army.

Plucked from surrounding paddy fields, they are utterly charming, their only English a vocabulary of golfing terms.

A centred drive jointly elicits compliments, advice and optimism, all in broken English. "Waahhhh Handsome Guy, good shot, chip on, one put, easy par."But for "out of bounds" they are remorseless. "OB, bye-bye ball," they chorus

Caddies and casualness mark the Filipino game. Also birthdays. Our group went out three days on the trot at Manila's oldest club, the charming Wack Wack, the beautiful Santa Elena and the cronified Valley with caddies who were all celebrating "birthdays" that required end-of-round "presents".

Gold in "The Pines" is a delight and carries with it little of the angst of across the South China Sea.

But the modern world is catching up even with The Pines. Santa Elena on Manila's outskirts is a stunning Trent Jones-designed course that wouldn't be out of place in manicured Florida. Membership is by appointment.

Such is the booming nature of Asian golf that many are the Greg Normans, Jack Nicklauses and Gary Players who are now lobbing in Asia and complimenting bad but influential players on their swings, shocking courses on their"challenging layouts".

Both Player and Norman have created companies to cash in on the Asian golf explosion, building courses in China and doing exhibitions to promote them. In Malaysia, Rodger Davis is building three courses with a number on the drawing board.

They've got a lot to answer for.