The China Golf Association (CGA) yesterday announced the launch of a US$8 million professional tour to nurture the game in the world's most populous nation.
"The future for golf in China -- the real, long-term future -- is not paying large sums to bring the world's superstars to play here. It is creating our own stars," Hu Jianguo, CGA vice-president said.
"We need to create more stars that we ourselves can be proud of, stars that the Chinese people will flock to see and stars that will eventually play among the world's top golfers," he said.
The CGA is in a US$8 million deal with Singapore-based sports marketing giant World Sports Group (WSG), which will organize four tournaments this year but expand the tour to 10 tournaments a year by 2008.
The inaugural event will be played at Beijing's Elephant Golf Club from Aug. 17 to Aug. 19. Subsequent host cities will be announced in the coming weeks but are expected to include Shanghai and Guangzhou, tour organizers said.
"The professionalism of consistently presenting quality events over a number of years will raise the profile of the game, the China Tour and Chinese players in China," WSG vice-president Nick Mould said.
"It won't happen instantly. It is a long-term process, and this is the first step. It's developmental. It's an investment in the future development of golf in China," he said.
Television rights are in the works, with WSG expecting to produce in-house 16 weeks of highlight programs to be run on local Chinese television stations. The announcement of event sponsors are also expected in the coming weeks, Mould said.
Prize money per event will start at US$100,000 this year and rise to US$200,000 by 2008.
In Shanghai in September, global golf sensation Tiger Woods will head a group of top players at the inaugural US$5 million HSBC Champions tournament, China's richest-ever tournament.
The event will be co-sanctioned by the European Tour, the Asian Tour, the PGA Tour of Australasia, the Sunshine Tour and the CGA.
"With the HSBC event all the money will disappear out of China and into the pockets of the world's best players," Tim Maitland, WSG spokesman said.
"Our event is going to be sustainable, the eight million invested for five years will go into the pockets of Chinese golfers," Maitland said.
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