Posted: 25 Mar 2010 02:03 AM PDT

By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING, March 25 (Reuters) - Being a golf architect in a country where the building of courses is technically banned does not sound like a great idea but it has not stopped American Brian Curley working successfully in China for 15 years.

Curley and partner Lee Schmidt have built some 25 courses in China, most notably at the vast Mission Hills club in Shenzhen and its new sister resort on Hainan, which will host the World Cup of Golf from next year.

That is all despite the moratorium on the building of new courses put in place in 2004 by a Chinese government concerned at the illegal procurement of vast tracts of farmland by some developers.

The moratorium means designers like Curley are not able to trumpet their achievements as much as they would like.

"We've got to fly under the radar," Curley told Reuters by telephone from his office in Hainan.

"You'd like to be able to toot your horn a bit but that's just not the way it works here. Because of moratorium issues, they'll put in the contract that we're not supposed to talk about it."

The ban also means the two Americans sometimes have to be creative in how they describe their projects on documents.

"Even when you produce plans you don't refer to it as a golf course, you refer to it as a park space, an open space," added Curley.

"We even on occasion have a deal where we invoice a bill but rather than being for golf design services, you almost have to create a letterhead that doesn't have the word "golf" in it.

"You reference it for "landscape design". They don't want any mention of golf. It's kind of all hush, hush, wink, wink."

Curley, who now spends about half his time in China, spotted the potential of Asia in the mid-1990s, speculating there would be "accelerated growth" in golf rather than the "ups and downs" that characterise the U.S. market.

"I realised early on this was the future, whether it was vision or luck we put all our eggs in that basket," he said.

WORLD'S LARGEST

Schmidt-Curley master-planned Mission Hills, a 12-course club hewn out of rocky hills close to the Hong Kong border and now recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's largest golf facility.

Five of the 11 championship courses were built in an astonishing 14 months.

"Everything on that job was a panic," laughed Curley. "We knew we could make one course in one year so we just multiplied everything by five or six.

"We had 2,000 pieces of equipment, 1,600 dump trucks working 24 hours a day."

The new Mission Hills Hainan development has three courses, making a total of five Schmidt-Curley layouts on the island that the Chinese government wants to turn into the new Hawaii.

Mission Hills confirmed that the master plan of the Hainan resort calls for more courses. A report in the Financial Times earlier this year said that six more were already shaped and seeded and the final total would be 22.

Given the prevailing circumstances, Curley prefers to talk more generally about the exciting trends he sees developing in China over the next decade.

"What's in China, and not Asia, is that for years and years and years it was so difficult to stop everybody doing the same thing," he said.

"I feel like that mould has got broken. There are some fantastic sites opening up. I think in the next 10 years you'll see five courses in the (world's) top 100 in China," said Curley.

"I think there will be a lot of really great quality golf experiences in China. Things are happening here that will be pretty earth-shattering in the golf design world."

(Editing by Tony Jimenez. To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Golf-Woods to face media on Monday of Masters week (Reuters via Yahoo! Sports)

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 06:03 PM PDT

NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - Tiger Woods will hold a news conference on the Monday of Masters week, Augusta National Golf Club officials said on Wednesday.

Woods will face the media on Monday April 5 of tournament week, a departure from his usual Tuesday news conference, before the start of the year's first major.

The American world number one has not competed since his victory at the Australian Masters on Nov. 15, following his stunning fall from grace amid tawdry revelations about his extra-marital affairs.

Four-times Masters winner Woods, who gave two brief television interviews on Sunday, is the only player scheduled to hold a news conference at Augusta that day, according to a schedule released by tournament officials.

The Masters runs from April 8-11. (Reporting by Larry Fine, Editing by Frank Pingue and Peter Rutherford; To query or comment on this story emailsportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Corellas leave golf course below par (Warrnambool Standard)

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 11:52 AM PDT

CORELLAS have struck again, wreaking havoc on a green at the golf course at Deakin University.

Regular visitor to the course Graham Kinge saw the damage to the first green on Wednesday while playing a round and said it was an annual problem.

"The greens people touch up the damage and do as much as they can, but they're fighting a losing battle," Mr Kinge said.

"The corellas mostly rip up the fairways but some times they get at the greens and tear out chunks."

He said it had been happening for many years but appeared to be getting worse.

"It's been worse since the drought, which forced the corellas down from up north," Mr Kinge said.

Mr Kinge said that a couple of years ago someone illegally poisoned a large flock of corellas at the Deakin course, using what he believed was poisoned wheat.

He said the practice was illegal but acknowledged it did keep the birds away for about a year.

"They're protected ... they say they're endangered, but you wouldn't say they were endangered if you saw the big flocks of them around the racecourse and golf course."

Deakin's media co-ordinator Mandi O'Garretty said staff working on the golf course faced the same problems each year.

"The university is working with the Department of Sustainability and Environment to appropriately deal with the corellas that descend on the golf course around this time each year," she said.

"In the meantime, our gardeners continue to repair the damage in an effort to reduce the impact on golfers using the course."

The corella damage follows the illegal poisoning of a large number of the native birds at Lismore earlier this month.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Golf studies at Frankton course (Otago Daily Times)

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 09:27 AM PDT

Sixteen students from the Southern Institute of Technology began their 34-week course for the certificate in high performance sport and personal training last week at the refurbished Frankton Golf Centre.

The students on the course can choose to concentrate on golf training with resident professional Jamie McIsaac, from Queenstown Golf Club, which operates both the 18-hole golf course at Kelvin Heights and the nine-hole course in Frankton.

Queenstown Golf Club chief executive Michael Shattock said he was delighted the Institute had chosen Frankton Golf Centre to provide the facilities for its tuition.

"It is a great boost for Frankton Golf Centre to be used in this way. We hope the students will soon be able to assist our other coaches in teaching the many juniors who attend our free clinics every Saturday morning. It should provide a great introduction to their coaching and career progression," Mr Shattock said.

The golf club's lease on the council land is due to expire in 2012, and the Queenstown Lakes District Council had indicated it would not renew the licence "in its current form", as the land had been earmarked for expansion of the Queenstown Events Centre.

This had spurred the golf club to launch a campaign to save the club, and Mr Shattock said more than 4000 people had so far signed the petition to keep the club at its Frankton location.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Golf Zone

Thursday, March 25, 2010

“Golf-Building Chinese golf courses on the hush, hush (Reuters via Yahoo! Sports)” plus 3 more

“Golf-Building Chinese golf courses on the hush, hush (Reuters via Yahoo! Sports)” plus 3 more

0 comments:

Post a Comment

FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed

Popular Posts