Golf Buddies

Flying Blue Golf members share their favourite golf memories with you! Whether it’s the group of golf buddies they play with or how they got their start, read their experiences here

Eye candy in a cooled-down market

Golf course design in China

When Mark Hollinger started building golf courses in China about two decades ago, there was only one 18-hole course in the entire country. “Now there are over 500 courses. The market was overheated for a long time, but has cooled down now”, says Hollinger, partner at JMP Golf Design Group in Belmont, CA, US. Hollinger, who designed twenty well-known golf venues in the last fifteen years (such as the Luxehills International GC in Chengdu), thinks the development boom of courses in China is far from over.

“This year, we just finished two new courses. Blue Bay Golf Club on Hainan Island will open on January 3, 2012 when the 400-room hotel that is part of this project and the clubhouse are finished. We are also just finishing two courses near Pudong Airport in Shanghai, one is a links style golf course and the other is a parkland course.”

Is there still a golf course building frenzy?

“Initially it was all about trying to attract players to buy memberships of the beautiful new clubs that were being built in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen. Right now, golf courses are creating value for other surrounding land uses, like residential and commercial property. Most of the owners of the new houses do not even play golf, they just like to live next to a golf course.”

“Another big driver for new developments is resort golf. Many new golf courses on Hainan Island, and in Kunming, Yunnan Province have been built for vacation golf purposes, next to, or part of resort hotels. The demand for new courses has slowed down. It has become harder to find financing for big developments. The central government is stricter, hoping to avoid bad investments and to prevent land speculation. In the end this will make the market situation a lot healthier though.”

What is it like to work in China’s golf industry?

“I have to be on top of things! If I stay in the US, the course will end up looking a lot different than on paper; it is hard to get qualified builders that can do the job, resulting in the right look & feel.”

“Chinese developers are extremely keen on achieving some spectacular holes in their courses, more than in Europe or in the US. I sometimes need to put in some extra ‘eye candy’, like a spectacular – and sometimes artificial – rock feature, a flashy bunker or a really awesome lake or stream. I need to do this to make a course more memorable, but not necessarily harder to play.”

What is your personal favourite creation?

“That must be hole 17 at Blue Bay, a pretty neat course altogether. Right at the sea, the green sits right on the beach. The shaping is a lot like St. Andrews, I am kind of proud of that one. The same goes for almost all holes of Jian Lake Golf Club, in Shaoxing, with a lot a water to make golf interesting. And hard!”