I looked over and there was my future wife, Sarah, face down, breathing into the airline sickness bag.
We were descending into a serious winter storm, and the plane bounced around as blinding lightning flashes engulfed us. Despite a career of questionable airline flights to and from off-the-grid places, it was the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced.
But at the end of a three-leg, 29 hour trip, I was almost too exhausted to care. I just wanted to get on the ground to begin this next phase of my professional golf adventure - a journey that led to Kunming, China.
Located in the Yunnan Province, in the southern corner of China, Kunming is home to Kunming OCT Wind Valley, a Nicklaus course 90 minutes by cab from the city on the Yangzong Sea (Yangzong “Sea” was actually a large lake known for its hot springs, scenic views and high levels of arsenic). Kunming OCT Wind Valley was playing host to Q-school for PGA Tour China’s 2016 season.
The golf course was stunning with views resembling Chambers Bay, and in the winter wind and cold, it was a true test of survival. We stayed at the course and drank hot tea everyday with club employees to stay warm.
My PGA Tour China career began with an inauspicious start: Bogey, Bogey, Triple. But I rallied to shoot 2-under for the 72-hole qualifier, finishing T-4, earning full status; an accomplishment we celebrated that night by learning local Chinese line dances with the course staff, high on life and the local spirit, Baijui.
Kunming OCT Wind Valley
China was a non-stop adventure: the stomach-churning mystery food, exhausting travel, curiosity of rural kids seeing their first foreigner, the never-ending acid rain, the extravagant hotels, the beautiful train rides, the ghost cities, the smell of outdoor cooking mixed with open sewage, the life-threatening traffic, the camaraderie of travelers, the suffocating smog, buying cheap flights in the cold airports, the comically difficult course setups, and the rules officials-in-training. I played on PGA Tour China and OneAsia Tour in 2016, and when the PGA Tour suspended Chinese operations in 2017, I played three events on the CGA’s pro circuit, the China Golf Tour. If you know of a Chinese professional golfer on the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour, or DPWT today, it’s partly because of these Chinese tours.
Having taken three semesters of Mandarin Chinese in college, I enjoyed traveling around China for the next two seasons, improving my language skills and embracing the foreign – and at times, otherworldly – experience.
So, recently, when I received an email from the China Golf Association with Q-school entry links for the 2024 China Tour season, as someone with no tour status, I began considering the possibility with some interest – interest that was heightened by two significant pieces of news from the European Tour.
First, Keith Pelley, CEO of the DP World Tour, is moving to Canada to lead Maple Leaf Sports; and secondly, the DP World Tour announced a strategic partnership with the China Golf Association. The former announcement significantly overshadowed the latter, but with all the discussion about a unified world tour, let’s talk about professional golf in China and what the partnership could mean.
The biggest news coming out of the partnership involves the return of the Volvo China Open to DPWT’s schedule after a four-year hiatus.
But more important to the growth of the game, the agreement will lead to the co-sanctioning of multiple Challenge Tour events with $500,000 purses in China; and DPWT status for the winner of the China Tour’s Order of Merit.
Players who finish 2nd through 4th on the China Tour’s Order of Merit will also benefit with exemptions to the second and final stage of DPWT Q-school. On the surface, this appears to be the reassembly of a partnership that began when I played on development circuits in China - and for professional golfers, a new pathway to the major tours.
There was a real effort to grow the game in the world’s second largest country – and second largest economy. The PGA Tour’s deal with the CGA required the majority of the field to be built with native Chinese players. If you were an experienced professional, this was great news as many of your competitors were not. There wasn’t much depth to the field and the top-3 finishers at each event received OWGR points.
But there was mounting tension between the leadership of PGA Tour China and the CGA that year, who, I believed, was supposed to have the final word on any decision pertaining to professional golf in China. The PGA Tour brand attracted many people to the events, especially the pro-ams, and kept the tournament operations running smoothly. There were also conflicting interests, it appeared, between the CGA and the government. While the CGA was technically a government organization with approval and veto power as it pertained to golf competitions, it seemed far removed from the politics of the country, and the social aims of Beijing.
During the Lanhai Open near Shanghai, Chinese government agents raided the country club we were competing at. I stood in a downpour with the club’s director as men wearing black and solemn expressions walked purposefully through the clubhouse, asking questions and searching sales counters. Some players had their passports and visas checked. One pro was deported for not having a proper visa.
Some club owners had emergency plans for such a raid. One club owner was given a tip his club would be the subject of an imminent investigation. In the story I heard, the club owner initiated a plan to transform his course into a public park within 24 hours, bringing in a small army to plant flower beds and bushes, move trees, add benches, and change signs. When government agents arrived, there was no longer a golf club to search.
The search launched around the club during the Lanhai Open was more amusing than alarming to most golfers, though the club director definitely didn’t see it that way. His club was not closed that day and to my knowledge, remains open. As we would soon see, other clubs we competed at weren’t so fortunate.
We players were naively optimistic. We thought it was a time of reform in China. People were walking around in expensive T-shirts and driving flashy cars in major cities. High-end western brands populated malls and you could get bottle-service at nightclubs. New luxurious buildings were being constructed everywhere and there were special economic zones empowered with greater business autonomy. In many places, it felt like capitalism was on full display.
China banned the construction of new golf courses in 2004. Going back to Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party views golf as elitist, and as the Xi Jinping era took root, members of the communist party were discouraged from playing the game.
But in the massive country where most political deals are local, more golf was being played, and with the allowance of PGA Tour China – it was assumed – things were changing.
On the golf course, junior clinics were packed, and western golf instructors were being paid exorbitant salaries to teach full-time. Tour purses were higher than other feeder tours with comparable standing. We players were under the impression we’d arrived during the golf boom. We were wrong. It was not peacetime.
By the middle of 2017, there had been far more raids like the one we witnessed at Lanhai. The Chinese government closed 111 courses and imposed restrictions on 65 more. Official reasons for the course closures varied, usually having to do with illegal use of natural resources. Unofficially, some of us heard wild stories of money laundering schemes that helped fund course construction, vendettas between builders, and politicians using golf for their own ends.
When PGA Tour China suspended the tour during this time, the DPWT (then European Tour) partnered with the CGA, offering their top money winner full status. Players towards the top of the PGA Tour China money list were given exemptions onto the CGA Tour, which is how I found my way into events.
Superficially, the CGA China Tour resembled PGA Tour China, but operationally the tour was a mess. Fewer non-Chinese players competed, there were widespread concerns about cheating, and the tour didn’t offer a reasonable way to pay foreign players. In the early events, the tour paid cash in local currency, or required players to set up a bank account in China.
It was around this time when flights to certain western provinces of the country became restricted. Flights to the Xinjiang province, which bordered Pakistan and Afghanistan, required special approval. I remember hearing China was fighting their own war on terror. Tournaments never strayed too far from the eastern side of the massive country, so it wasn’t a consideration to anyone playing pro golf. We now know the cause of this change: Chinese crackdown on the Uyghurs, people that we then knew nothing about, let alone their suffering.
I made it to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2018, the year PGA Tour China resumed operations after signing a 20-year deal with Beijing-based management firm, Shankai Sports. Shankai Sports announced that Yao Capital was investing RMB300 million in the venture – about $45 million.
At the end of the KFT-season, I returned to play one of my favorite tournaments, the Clearwater Bay Open in Hong Kong. There were discussions that a change was coming to the former British colony. Turns out, the “one country, two systems” arrangement between Hong Kong and China was collapsing sooner than expected.
A taxi driver was quite worried about surveillance in schools and coming changes to school curriculums - and pro-am partners made it clear the sleeping giant had returned: China’s rule of Hong Kong was inevitable. A year later, millions of people took to the streets in protest, arrests were made, and people disappeared.
With COVID raging, PGA Tour China did not operate in 2020 and hoped to push their season to 2021, but with the country in full lockdown, no more events were ever played. The CGA China Tour resumed competitions at the end of 2020, albeit with significantly smaller purses and fewer events, and the DPWT exemption for the leading money winner was withdrawn.
With the renewed partnership and the two largest regular-season purses on the Challenge Tour being hosted in China next October - which top players from CGA China Tour will have access to - China once again has a pathway for professional golfers. In addition, the money is better, with purses nearly doubling to 1,000,000 Yuan, or around $140,000 per event. While the changes are most beneficial for Chinese players who haven’t had an opportunity to advance since pre-COVID, I imagine there will be non-Chinese players hungry enough to spend a season eating mystery dumplings around China.
At this stage of my life and my career, I will not be one of them. I am trying to teach my three-year-old son to count in Mandarin - it’s good for his development I’m told, and I will raise him to be as effective with chopsticks as he is with a lob wedge. One day, I hope China will be a place we can visit together and perhaps he can demonstrate his proficiency at both.
The DPWT/China Tour news is good news. If we’re moving towards the world’s best in professional golf playing on a unified world tour, you can’t ignore the second largest population, and second largest economy on earth. On his way out the door, Keith Pelley brought China back into the global world of professional golf.
Given the risks that exist today, how many players will take him up on it is a whole other question.
The golf course was stunning with views resembling Chambers Bay, and in the winter wind and cold, it was a true test of survival. We stayed at the course and drank hot tea everyday with club employees to stay warm.
My PGA Tour China career began with an inauspicious start: Bogey, Bogey, Triple. But I rallied to shoot 2-under for the 72-hole qualifier, finishing T-4, earning full status; an accomplishment we celebrated that night by learning local Chinese line dances with the course staff, high on life and the local spirit, Baijui.
Kunming OCT Wind Valley
China was a non-stop adventure: the stomach-churning mystery food, exhausting travel, curiosity of rural kids seeing their first foreigner, the never-ending acid rain, the extravagant hotels, the beautiful train rides, the ghost cities, the smell of outdoor cooking mixed with open sewage, the life-threatening traffic, the camaraderie of travelers, the suffocating smog, buying cheap flights in the cold airports, the comically difficult course setups, and the rules officials-in-training. I played on PGA Tour China and OneAsia Tour in 2016, and when the PGA Tour suspended Chinese operations in 2017, I played three events on the CGA’s pro circuit, the China Golf Tour. If you know of a Chinese professional golfer on the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour, or DPWT today, it’s partly because of these Chinese tours.
Having taken three semesters of Mandarin Chinese in college, I enjoyed traveling around China for the next two seasons, improving my language skills and embracing the foreign – and at times, otherworldly – experience.
So, recently, when I received an email from the China Golf Association with Q-school entry links for the 2024 China Tour season, as someone with no tour status, I began considering the possibility with some interest – interest that was heightened by two significant pieces of news from the European Tour.
First, Keith Pelley, CEO of the DP World Tour, is moving to Canada to lead Maple Leaf Sports; and secondly, the DP World Tour announced a strategic partnership with the China Golf Association. The former announcement significantly overshadowed the latter, but with all the discussion about a unified world tour, let’s talk about professional golf in China and what the partnership could mean.
The biggest news coming out of the partnership involves the return of the Volvo China Open to DPWT’s schedule after a four-year hiatus.
But more important to the growth of the game, the agreement will lead to the co-sanctioning of multiple Challenge Tour events with $500,000 purses in China; and DPWT status for the winner of the China Tour’s Order of Merit.
Players who finish 2nd through 4th on the China Tour’s Order of Merit will also benefit with exemptions to the second and final stage of DPWT Q-school. On the surface, this appears to be the reassembly of a partnership that began when I played on development circuits in China - and for professional golfers, a new pathway to the major tours.
There was a real effort to grow the game in the world’s second largest country – and second largest economy. The PGA Tour’s deal with the CGA required the majority of the field to be built with native Chinese players. If you were an experienced professional, this was great news as many of your competitors were not. There wasn’t much depth to the field and the top-3 finishers at each event received OWGR points.
But there was mounting tension between the leadership of PGA Tour China and the CGA that year, who, I believed, was supposed to have the final word on any decision pertaining to professional golf in China. The PGA Tour brand attracted many people to the events, especially the pro-ams, and kept the tournament operations running smoothly. There were also conflicting interests, it appeared, between the CGA and the government. While the CGA was technically a government organization with approval and veto power as it pertained to golf competitions, it seemed far removed from the politics of the country, and the social aims of Beijing.
During the Lanhai Open near Shanghai, Chinese government agents raided the country club we were competing at. I stood in a downpour with the club’s director as men wearing black and solemn expressions walked purposefully through the clubhouse, asking questions and searching sales counters. Some players had their passports and visas checked. One pro was deported for not having a proper visa.
Some club owners had emergency plans for such a raid. One club owner was given a tip his club would be the subject of an imminent investigation. In the story I heard, the club owner initiated a plan to transform his course into a public park within 24 hours, bringing in a small army to plant flower beds and bushes, move trees, add benches, and change signs. When government agents arrived, there was no longer a golf club to search.
The search launched around the club during the Lanhai Open was more amusing than alarming to most golfers, though the club director definitely didn’t see it that way. His club was not closed that day and to my knowledge, remains open. As we would soon see, other clubs we competed at weren’t so fortunate.
We players were naively optimistic. We thought it was a time of reform in China. People were walking around in expensive T-shirts and driving flashy cars in major cities. High-end western brands populated malls and you could get bottle-service at nightclubs. New luxurious buildings were being constructed everywhere and there were special economic zones empowered with greater business autonomy. In many places, it felt like capitalism was on full display.
China banned the construction of new golf courses in 2004. Going back to Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party views golf as elitist, and as the Xi Jinping era took root, members of the communist party were discouraged from playing the game.
But in the massive country where most political deals are local, more golf was being played, and with the allowance of PGA Tour China – it was assumed – things were changing.
On the golf course, junior clinics were packed, and western golf instructors were being paid exorbitant salaries to teach full-time. Tour purses were higher than other feeder tours with comparable standing. We players were under the impression we’d arrived during the golf boom. We were wrong. It was not peacetime.
By the middle of 2017, there had been far more raids like the one we witnessed at Lanhai. The Chinese government closed 111 courses and imposed restrictions on 65 more. Official reasons for the course closures varied, usually having to do with illegal use of natural resources. Unofficially, some of us heard wild stories of money laundering schemes that helped fund course construction, vendettas between builders, and politicians using golf for their own ends.
When PGA Tour China suspended the tour during this time, the DPWT (then European Tour) partnered with the CGA, offering their top money winner full status. Players towards the top of the PGA Tour China money list were given exemptions onto the CGA Tour, which is how I found my way into events.
Superficially, the CGA China Tour resembled PGA Tour China, but operationally the tour was a mess. Fewer non-Chinese players competed, there were widespread concerns about cheating, and the tour didn’t offer a reasonable way to pay foreign players. In the early events, the tour paid cash in local currency, or required players to set up a bank account in China.
It was around this time when flights to certain western provinces of the country became restricted. Flights to the Xinjiang province, which bordered Pakistan and Afghanistan, required special approval. I remember hearing China was fighting their own war on terror. Tournaments never strayed too far from the eastern side of the massive country, so it wasn’t a consideration to anyone playing pro golf. We now know the cause of this change: Chinese crackdown on the Uyghurs, people that we then knew nothing about, let alone their suffering.
I made it to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2018, the year PGA Tour China resumed operations after signing a 20-year deal with Beijing-based management firm, Shankai Sports. Shankai Sports announced that Yao Capital was investing RMB300 million in the venture – about $45 million.
At the end of the KFT-season, I returned to play one of my favorite tournaments, the Clearwater Bay Open in Hong Kong. There were discussions that a change was coming to the former British colony. Turns out, the “one country, two systems” arrangement between Hong Kong and China was collapsing sooner than expected.
A taxi driver was quite worried about surveillance in schools and coming changes to school curriculums - and pro-am partners made it clear the sleeping giant had returned: China’s rule of Hong Kong was inevitable. A year later, millions of people took to the streets in protest, arrests were made, and people disappeared.
With COVID raging, PGA Tour China did not operate in 2020 and hoped to push their season to 2021, but with the country in full lockdown, no more events were ever played. The CGA China Tour resumed competitions at the end of 2020, albeit with significantly smaller purses and fewer events, and the DPWT exemption for the leading money winner was withdrawn.
With the renewed partnership and the two largest regular-season purses on the Challenge Tour being hosted in China next October - which top players from CGA China Tour will have access to - China once again has a pathway for professional golfers. In addition, the money is better, with purses nearly doubling to 1,000,000 Yuan, or around $140,000 per event. While the changes are most beneficial for Chinese players who haven’t had an opportunity to advance since pre-COVID, I imagine there will be non-Chinese players hungry enough to spend a season eating mystery dumplings around China.
At this stage of my life and my career, I will not be one of them. I am trying to teach my three-year-old son to count in Mandarin - it’s good for his development I’m told, and I will raise him to be as effective with chopsticks as he is with a lob wedge. One day, I hope China will be a place we can visit together and perhaps he can demonstrate his proficiency at both.
The DPWT/China Tour news is good news. If we’re moving towards the world’s best in professional golf playing on a unified world tour, you can’t ignore the second largest population, and second largest economy on earth. On his way out the door, Keith Pelley brought China back into the global world of professional golf.
Given the risks that exist today, how many players will take him up on it is a whole other question.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
0 Comments