这项贵族运动正在中国寻找希望

17岁那年，窦泽成知道他应该转为职业选手。在父母的支持下，他放弃了念到一半的高中，刻苦练球。那时，他的球技足以跟职业球手相媲美。

窦泽成身高约1.8米，体重约70公斤，看不去比一般的职业高尔夫球手瘦弱一些。可并不强壮的他却有着极其凶悍的挥杆力量，甚至在去年上海站的一场比赛引起了美巡赛(PGA Tour)中挥杆最猛的巴巴·沃森的注意。窦泽成在这场比赛的最终排名高于明星级球手亚当·斯科特和松田松山。

“他一点不怯场。” 沃森惊叹道。“挥杆如此迅猛的亚洲选手不多见。”

暂且抛开这位两次美国名人赛桂冠得主的夸奖。19岁的窦泽成目前是中国首屈一指的球手，并且有望很快成为第一位在全球顶级赛事打球的中国高尔夫球手。他小时候曾在加拿大生活了五年，但他打算避开一条经过其他亚洲高尔夫新星检验的可行路径，即首先进入一所美国学院，然后在美国打青少年巡回赛，最终跻身职业球手之列。朋友们给他讲述了很多关于美国学院夜生活的故事，比如喝酒，泡妞，等等。窦泽成的父亲，一位日间交易员，认为他需要在中国心无旁骛，安安静静地练球。“我会逃课的，我可受不了各种派对的诱惑。”窦泽成笑着说。

Marty Dou knew at 17 years old that he should turn professional. He had been skipping half his high school classes to play, with his parents’ blessing, and by then his game was good enough to keep up with the pros.

At maybe 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds, Marty (his given name is Zecheng, but everybody calls him Marty) looks smaller than your typical pro golfer. But his size belies a swing so aggressive that even Bubba Watson, the PGA Tour’s hardest swinger, took notice at a tournament in Shanghai last year where the two played together—and where Marty finished higher than stars Adam Scott and Hideki Matsuyama.

“He has no fear,” Watson marveled. “We don’t often see an Asian-born player swinging that hard.”

Compliments from a two-time Masters winner aside, Marty, now 19, is currently the best golfer playing in China—and could soon become the first mainland Chinese golfer to compete at the top global level. He spent five years of his childhood in Canada, but he’s skipping the tried-and-true route taken by other Asian golf stars to the pros of enrolling in a U.S. college before playing junior tours in America. Friends told him stories about American college nightlife, with its drinking and hookups. His dad, a day trader, thought he needed quiet practice in China. “I’d skip school,” Marty says, laughing. “I’m too tempted by parties.”

幸运的是，他不必离开中国，也有机会在最大的高尔夫舞台一试身手。2014年，作为全球最著名的高尔夫组织，美国职业高尔夫协会(PGA)开始举办美巡中国系列赛。这项职业联赛将给予有前途的年轻球员一个登上美国更高竞争舞台的机会。它相当于美国2A棒球小联盟：球员们可以先在中国磨炼几年，如果他们的表现足够好，就可自动进军另一个仅比美巡赛低一个级别的联赛。反过来，中国系列赛则为高尔夫运动提供了它迫切需要的东西：一个庞大且不断壮大的中产阶级群体。正是这一群体，使得中国成为这项运动一个巨大的增长机会。

迄今为止，以挥杆迅猛著称的窦泽成，已经斩获中国系列赛本赛季9站比赛中的4站冠军。凭借这一傲人的成绩，他明年注定将赶赴美国，角逐更高水平的职业联赛，从而有望成为中华人民共和国第一位全程参加美巡赛的高尔夫球手。在中国，高尔夫运动能否像窦泽成一样迅速崛起，是一个事关数十亿美元的问题。

★

在一个拥有14亿人口的国家，这项运动的潜力肯定与任何人的想象一样巨大。中国的高尔夫玩家估计在100万人左右，仅是美国2400万高尔夫人口的一小部分。倘若只有2%的中国人打高尔夫（这项比例目前还不到0.1%），中国就可能成为一个每年价值20亿美元的高尔夫产品市场。对于这个在美国和欧洲的增速已陷于停滞的产业来说，这真可谓天赐良机。在美国和欧洲，诸如耐克和阿迪达斯这类制造商正在放弃高尔夫设备业务，许多球场岌岌可危。

中国拥有一项世界其他任何地方都不具备的条件：一个财富迅速增长，首次考虑打高尔夫的人口。现如今，许多高尔夫教练已经从欧美涌向这里，每节课收取高达600美元的费用。练习场人头攒动，挤满了第一次拿起球杆的准球员。

但在中国，高尔夫运动的发展面临政治、经济和文化等因素的层层掣肘。在过去三年，习近平主席发起的反腐运动早已将矛头指向这项运动，部分原因是高尔夫球场是腐败官员最喜欢的聚会场所。不断加大的审查力度导致数十家球场关闭，这一现象很可能危及尚处于婴儿期的美巡中国系列赛。

甚至在政治风向转变之前，高尔夫就在中国面临先天劣势。首当其冲的是，土地极度稀缺。尽管自2000年以来，中国各地掀起了一股高尔夫球场建设热潮，但全国目前仅有600家球场，远低于美国的1.5万家。几乎没有一个是那种收费相对低廉，适合初学者的市政球场。几乎所有球场都是远离市中心，大门紧闭，有保安巡视的私人俱乐部。周末玩一轮高尔夫动辄需要200美元，甚或更多，是美国正常水平的4倍或5倍。要知道，一位典型的中国城市居民每年只有约5000美元的可支配收入。

其结果是，中国的初学者皆属最富裕的1%人口群体。就推广一项体育运动的人气而言，这绝非那种最理想的玩家基础。在20世纪20年代（所谓的“镀金时代”）的美国，高尔夫同样是富人的专利，但这项休闲运动很快就成星火燎原之势。在PGA副总裁，大中华区董事总经理葛国瑞看来，PGA在中国的发展，总得从某个地方开始。“中国消费者很渴望参与这项运动。”在美巡赛新开设的驻北京办事处接受《财富》专访时，他这样说道。当天只有两位工作人员在这个狭小的房间办公：葛国瑞本人，外加一位接待员。“试想一下，如果一个人的可支配收入持续上涨，那会是什么情形？我想到的是一位走在大街上的女士，她肩背Prada包，身穿Gucci衬衫，一只手端着一杯星巴克咖啡，另一只手拿着iPhone手机。对于她来说，下一个目标是什么？”

葛国瑞希望她的下一个目标是一把闪亮的高尔夫球杆。他的职责不仅仅是运营美巡中国系列赛；说服数百万中国人相信，高尔夫是一种他们应该开始观看、喜爱，甚至考虑玩玩的爱好，也是他的职责范畴。他看上去神态自若，拥有满满一衣柜的美巡赛高尔夫球衫。加入PGA之前，他曾在麦当劳中国公司工作了近14年，还做了4年中国美国商会主席。（他自己的球技？“不是很好。大家都认为我们经常打高尔夫。不是这样的。”）

2013年，葛国瑞开始运营当时看上去前景光明的PGA中国业务。自2000年以来，中国高尔夫球手的数量已增加了两倍。早在1995年就举办了中国首届PGA附属赛事的观澜湖高尔夫球会，现已发展成为世界上最大的高尔夫球场，在深圳以外有12个球场。

中国此前也尝试过一个以瑞士手表赞助商命名的小型职业联赛：欧米茄巡回赛。这项赛事仅持续了4年，就于2009年寿终正寝。但PGA和中国高尔夫球协会(下文简称CGA，这家国营组织要求任何一家试图进入中国市场的海外高尔夫投资者必须与它合作)有机会从欧米茄巡回赛所犯的错误中汲取经验教训。最值得指出的是，欧米茄只允许中国高尔夫球手参赛。这不仅不利于吸引观众，而且也对潜在的竞争者构成伤害。中国的高尔夫球手需要参与更激烈的竞争，而在一个封闭的联赛中，他们无法获得进军国际赛事所需的世界排名积分。

随着PGA开始与CGA展开谈判，有一种越来越强烈的声音认为，一旦由外国人运营联赛，中国高尔夫球手将没有容身之地。狼来了，一些中国评论家惊呼道。因此，代表CGA谈判的高尔夫推广经理邵华回忆说，这家国营组织始终坚持三项要求：充足的资金保障，世界排名积分，中国球员的占比不低于参赛选手的一半。

2013年，双方代表在加州奥古斯塔举行的美国名人赛期间首次会面，当年晚些时候移师俄亥俄州进一步磋商。CGA最终为中国斩获一个PGA联赛，它类似于该联盟在拉丁美洲和加拿大运营的其他低级别“迷你巡回赛”，是一项面向全球准职业球手的精英公开赛。CGA并没有赢得一个它坚决要求的条件，即一半参赛选手必须是中国人，但事实证明，这项要求其实并没有多大意义。迄今为止，中国球手在美巡中国系列赛的表现已经超越了外国狼。在2015年联赛年终奖金榜排名前10的选手中，有4位是中国人。“当然，对于中方来说，最好前10名都是中国人。”邵华笑着说。

和许多人一样，葛国瑞预测称，中国将成为下一个职业高尔夫球手集中爆发的国家。他说，继20世纪80年代后期的日本和随后的韩国之后（目前有多达14位韩国球手参加美巡赛），中国“肯定会有两位数的职业球手”登上这个顶级联赛。以窦泽成为代表的新一代中国高尔夫球手有着类似的成长轨迹：他们从小就接受高尔夫球教练的指导，父母愿意资助他们参加各项赛事，老师也不介意他们翘课。窦泽成之所以能够参加上海公开赛，与沃森和斯科特这类顶级球手同场竞技，是因为中国职业球手获得了前一代人梦寐以求的机会。

★

美巡中国系列赛也受益于最近的一项重大规则改变。正是这项改变，给予了欧美青年才俊在重庆和南京等地打球的动力。2012年，美巡赛放弃资格赛事。PGA的低级别巡回赛随即成为许多高尔夫新星的必经之路。现在参与中国系列赛的，既有使用自制球杆，较晚开始打球的中年中国人，也有挥杆动作极为标准的韩国人，还有一些刚从学院毕业，身材高大的美国人。经常有来自五大洲的球员同场竞技。

查理·萨克逊今年从俄克拉荷马州爱德蒙赶赴中国参赛。自大学一年级以来，他已增重40磅，所以他的爆炸式开球能够飞得更远。这位23岁的年轻人拥有像综合格斗士那样宽阔的背部。“无论好坏，你再也不能直接参加美巡赛了——对于我和其他人来说，这是个坏消息。”萨克逊说。相反，球手们必须首先参加第二高级别的Web.com巡回赛，然后才能进入顶级联赛。在中巡赛这类附属初级赛事获得高排名的球手，将在美国Web.com巡回赛获得一席之地，而不必参加这项巡回赛以严苛著称的资格赛。

萨克逊目前在中巡赛奖金排行榜上高居第二，很可能将入选明年的Web.com巡回赛。不过，中巡赛也并不缺少艰难险阻。不远万里赶赴外国参赛，自然没有在本国打球那么舒适惬意。“没有人想来这里，但我们只能这么做。”来自英国达林顿的球手，现年25岁的卡勒姆·塔伦说。他的中巡赛排名还不够高，这意味着他明年很可能还得参与另一项初级赛事，或许是在欧洲。身材高大的澳洲球手，26岁的林肯·泰伊说，往返于中国各大城市，令他身心疲惫，尤其不能忍受的是各类油腻的食物。“我只想要个鸡胸。”他说。

★

就高尔夫市场的潜力而言，PGA进军中国的时机不可能更好；但就中国的政治形势而言，这个时机不可能更糟。

在2013年成为中国领导人不久后，习近平就发起了一场规模空前的反腐运动。高尔夫球场俨然已成为滋生腐败的温床。除僻静和排他之外，许多乡村俱乐部并不要求会员或客人使用其真实姓名，所以官员们可以神不知鬼不觉地接受他人馈赠的会员资格。

2014年，即美巡中国系列赛的第一年，一批纪检官员涌入各大高尔夫俱乐部，核查营业执照和会员记录。另一个不利因素是，2004年建造的许多高尔夫球场在技术上是非法的，因为政府的“禁建令”基本上遭到无视。多达100家球场最终被政府关闭。2015年，中国系列赛不得不取消两站赛事——作为其中一站赛事的主办方，港中旅聚豪(深圳)高尔夫球会的会员失去了最初缴纳的13万美元会员费。中国系列赛的组织者顿时不知所措，他们不知道政府是否会从赛事日程表上抹去更多的球场。PGA的赛事日程“面临巨大的不确定性，他们不知道哪个开发商手续齐全。”新加坡IMG高尔夫管理公司赛事主管格兰特·斯莱克说。“2015年的情势真的很糟糕，今年春天也是如此。”负责赛事物流事务的中国系列赛执行总监顾凯森说。

今年，持续的不确定性迫使美巡中国系列赛在开赛前几周才公布赛程。起初仅安排了12站赛事；赛季中期又增添了一站。“很难找到愿意跟我们合作的球场。”中国高尔夫运动推广人邵华感慨万千。在郁郁葱葱的云南省，一家球场的负责人表示，他的俱乐部现在以全民健身运动的名义营销高尔夫球。“过去一两年的艰难促使每个人都开始反思。”他说。由于担心地方政府的反应，他不愿意公开身份。

潜在的赞助商也同样谨慎。在美国，诸如宝马、旅行者和约翰·迪尔这类全球品牌与个别赛事建立了长期的“冠名赞助商”关系。（比如，PGA别克公开赛持续了长达51年之久，直至通用汽车公司宣布破产。）但中国的反腐运动冷却了这种机会；现如今，中国赛事的冠名赞助商通常都是高尔夫球场及其房地产开发商。

PGA大中华区董事总经理葛国瑞认为，这些挑战将随着时间的推移而消失。关于不利的政治因素：“我碰到的很多官员都表示，重返球场完全没问题。”关于缺少高尔夫球场：“垃圾填埋场！”中国有很多废弃的垃圾填埋场，这些填埋场下面的甲烷气体意味着，你不能在上面建造房屋，而高尔夫球场将让这些土地变废为宝。关于吸引更多的中国人尝试打高尔夫：“中国人正在等待他们的老虎伍兹。我们无法预言这一幕何时降临，但中国迟早会涌现一位超级巨星。”

新崛起的中国高尔夫新星，不仅仅是窦泽成一人。21岁的李昊桐赢得今年的欧巡赛-沃尔沃中国公开赛，并全程参加欧洲巡回赛。27岁的冯珊珊全程参与美国女子职业高尔夫球协会(LPGA)巡回赛，并在今年的里约奥运会上摘得女子高尔夫铜牌。（约三分之一的中国高尔夫球手是女性，自2008年以来，LPGA一直在运营中国系列赛。）高尔夫设备制造商幻想着，其中一人或多人终将突破重围，并在中国引发一股高尔夫热潮。大约10%的美国成年人打高尔夫；如果中国接近这个水平，那将是极其壮观的增长。2011年和2012年，Callaway、Titleist和其他外国品牌在华销售额年均增速高达30%。尽管这种增速近来有所放缓，但正如汇丰控股曾经宣称的那样，高尔夫运动正在移师东方。

Luckily for him, he didn’t have to leave China for a shot at golf’s biggest stage. Since 2014, the PGA, the world’s most prominent golf association, has run PGA Tour China Series, a professional league that gives promising young players a shot at graduating to higher competition in the U.S. It’s analogous to Double A minor league baseball in America: Players can put in a couple of years in China and—if they perform well enough—earn an automatic berth into another league that’s one rung below the PGA Tour. The China Tour, in turn, offers golf something it desperately needs: better access to the enormous and growing middle class that makes the country a huge growth opportunity for the sport.

Hard-swinging Marty has already won four of the nine tournaments played this season. He’s guaranteed of moving to the next level in the U.S. next year, where he will get his shot to become the first golfer from the People’s Republic of China to play full-time on the PGA Tour. Whether golf can rise as quickly in China as Marty has is a question with multibillion-dollar stakes.

★

In a country of 1.4 billion, the potential for the sport is certainly as vast as anyone’s imagination. Estimates of the number of Chinese golfers fall around 1 million, a small fraction of the 24 million who play in the U.S. If just 2% of China’s population played, up from less than 0.1% today, China could become a $2-billion-a-year market for golf products. That would be a godsend for an industry whose growth has sputtered in the U.S. and Europe, where manufacturers like Nike NKE -1.43% and Adidas ADDYY -5.94% are getting out of the golf-equipment business, and courses are closing.

China offers what no other place in the world can: a population that’s growing rapidly more affluent and thinking about golf for the first time. Already, golf teachers have flocked here from Europe and the U.S., charging $600 a lesson, and driving ranges are crowded with first-time players.

But the political, economic, and cultural constraints holding golf back in China run deep. President Xi Jinping’s antigraft campaign has targeted the sport for the past three years, in part because golf courses became a favorite rendezvous for corrupt officials. The heightened scrutiny led to dozens of courses being shut, a phenomenon that threatened to suffocate PGA Tour China in its infancy.

Even before the political winds shifted, golf had disadvantages in China. Land is scarce, and despite a building spree since 2000, the country has only about 600 courses (the U.S. has 15,000). Virtually none are the type of cheap, municipal links that cater to beginners. Almost every course is a private club located far outside the city center, behind closed gates manned by security guards. A round during the weekend pushes $200 or more, four or five times the norm in the U.S.—in a country where the typical urbanite has only about $5,000 a year in disposable income.

The result is that China’s beginners are the richest 1% of society, not exactly the ideal base from which to expand a sport’s popularity. Then again, you could have said the same about the sport’s clientele in America during the gilded 1920s, just before the pastime caught fire. To Greg Gilligan, head of the China Tour, the PGA has to start somewhere. “The Chinese consumer is aspirational,” he tells Fortune during an interview in the tour’s small, new Beijing office, where today it’s just the receptionist and him. “Think of someone moving up in disposable income. I think about the woman walking down the street, with the Prada purse, the Gucci shirt, the Starbucks in one hand and iPhone in the other. What’s next?”

Gilligan hopes what’s next is a shiny new driver. His responsibility extends beyond running the league: It’s his job to convince millions of Chinese that golf is a hobby they should start watching, loving, and maybe even playing. He wears a calm demeanor and a closet’s worth of rotating PGA Tour golf shirts. He spent almost 14 years in China for McDonald’s MCD -0.41% and four years chairing the American Chamber of Commerce in China before joining the PGA. (His own game? “Not great. Everyone thinks we get on the course a lot. Not the case.”)

When Gilligan started running the PGA’s China business in 2013, the outlook was bright. The number of Chinese golfers had tripled since 2000. Missions Hills, which hosted the first PGA-affiliated tournament in China in 1995, had expanded into the world’s largest golf complex, with 12 courses outside Shenzhen.

China had even experimented with a small professional league, called the Omega Tour, named for the Swiss watch brand that sponsored it. That tour had a short run, lasting four years before folding in 2009. But the PGA—and the state-run China Golf Association (CGA), which requires any foreign golf investor to join it as a partner—had a chance to learn from that tour’s mistakes. Most notably, the Omega had allowed only Chinese golfers to compete. That hurt it with audiences, but also with would-be competitors. China’s golfers needed better competition, and in a closed league, they couldn’t earn the world ranking points they needed to enter international tournaments.

As the PGA began negotiations with the CGA, there was a growing sense in China that a foreign-run league would crowd out Chinese golfers. The wolves are coming, Chinese critics said. So the state-run group insisted on three requirements, recalls Shao Hua, a golf promotion manager who helped negotiate on behalf of the CGA: a financial guarantee, world ranking points, and no less than half the tour players to be Chinese nationals.

The two sides met at the 2013 Masters in Augusta, Ga., and later that year in Ohio. The CGA ultimately got a PGA league in China that’s the same as the league’s other junior “mini-tours” in Latin America and Canada—an open meritocracy for the world’s wannabe pros. The CGA didn’t win on its insistence that half the players be Chinese, but it turned out it didn’t need to. In competition so far, the Chinese have outrun the foreign wolves. In 2015, four of the top 10 players in the league’s year-end money rankings were Chinese. “For the Chinese side,” Shao says with a grin, “of course, 10 out of 10 would be good.”

Gilligan, like many, predicts that China will be golf’s next breakout country for pro golfers. Following the lead of Japan in the late 1980s and later Korea, which now has 14 players on the PGA Tour, China “will definitely have double digits” competing at the top level, he says. Marty Dou is part of the new generation of Chinese golfers who grew up with swing coaches, parents who bankrolled their tournaments, and teachers who didn’t mind them skipping school. He was able to join the Shanghai tournament and compete with the likes of Watson and Scott because Chinese professionals got slots that an earlier generation could only wish for.

★

PGA Tour China is also benefiting from a key recent rule change that gave young U.S. and European talent an incentive to play in places like Chongqing and Nanjing. In 2012 the PGA Tour dropped its Qualifying School tournament; after that, the PGA’s lower-level tours became a necessary stop for many up-and-comers. Today the Chinese tour has middle-age Chinese with homemade swings who started playing golf late in life, Koreans with picture-perfect swings, and big Americans fresh from college. Often there are players from five continents in the field.

Charlie Saxon traveled from Edmond, Okla., to China this year. Having put on 40 pounds since his freshman year in college so he could bomb his drives farther, the 23-year-old’s back is as wide as a mixed martial arts fighter’s. “For better or for worse—and for worse for me and other guys—you can’t qualify directly for the PGA Tour anymore,” says Saxon. Instead, players must first play on the second-highest level, the Web.com Tour, before they can reach the top level. Playing on affiliated junior tours like China’s allows high finishers to earn spots on the Web.com Tour in the U.S. without undergoing all of that tour’s rigorous qualifying tournaments.

Saxon, who ranks second on the China Tour’s money rankings, is likely to qualify for the Web.com circuit next year. In the meantime, the China Tour isn’t without hardship. Some struggle in a foreign land where the comforts of home are far. “No one wants to be here, but we got to be,” says Callum Tarren, 25, from Darlington, England. His not-quite-high-enough ranking in China means that he will likely play in another junior tour next year, maybe in Europe. Lincoln Tighe, 26, a towering Australian, says he has grown exhausted from hopping from Chinese city to Chinese city, as the oily and fried feasts served at each tournament wore him down. “I just want a chicken breast,” he says.

★

In terms of golf’s potential, the PGA’s timing in China couldn’t have been better; in terms of the country’s politics, it couldn’t have been worse.

Not long after he became China’s leader in 2013, Xi Jinping launched an anticorruption drive. Golf had become a locus of graft: In addition to being secluded and exclusive, many of China’s country clubs didn’t require members or guests to use their real names, so officials could accept the gift of a club membership without public notice.

In 2014, PGA Tour China’s first year, local regulators stormed into clubs to check business licenses and membership logs. It didn’t help that courses built since 2004 were technically illegal because of a construction moratorium that was mostly ignored. One hundred courses were eventually closed by the government, and in 2015 the China Tour had to cancel two of its tournaments. (Members at one course that had been slated to host an event, CTS Tycoon in Shenzhen, lost their initial $130,000 membership fee.) China Tour organizers were left scrambling, not knowing whether the government would wipe more courses off the tournament calendar. The PGA’s schedule “coincided with uncertainty about which developers had the right paperwork in place,” says Grant Slack, head of golf events for IMG Golf in Singapore. “It was really bad in 2015, bad this spring,” says Greg Carlson, the China Tour’s executive director, who handles tournament logistics.

This year, continuing uncertainty forced PGA Tour China to announce its schedule just a couple of weeks in advance. Only 12 tournaments were scheduled; a 13th was added midseason. “It’s tough to find courses to work with us,” says Shao, the Chinese golf promoter. The head of a course in the lush southern province of Yunnan, who asked not to be named because he was nervous about local authorities’ reactions, said his club was now marketing golf as a fitness movement, to keep the government at bay. “The tough time in the past one or two years has prompted everyone to reflect,” he says.

Potential corporate backers are just as wary. In the U.S., global brands like BMW, Travelers, and John Deere build long-lasting “title sponsor” relationships with individual tournaments (the PGA Tour’s Buick Open lasted 51 years before General Motors went bankrupt). But China’s anticorruption campaign chilled such opportunities; for now, Chinese tournament title sponsors are usually the golf course and its real estate developer.

The PGA’s Gilligan thinks the challenges will melt away with time. On the bad politics: “I’ve bumped into a lot of officials who say it’s okay to be back on the course.” On the lack of courses: “Landfills!” China has lots of old ones, and the methane gas underneath means you can’t put buildings on them; golf courses would make the land useful. On wooing more Chinese to try golf: “They’re waiting for their Tiger Woods. We can’t set our clock to stardom, but it’s going to happen.”

China does have budding stars beyond Marty Dou. Li Haotong, who’s 21, won the European Tour’s Volvo China Open this year and plays full-time on the European tour. Shanshan Feng, 27, plays on the LPGA Tour in the U.S. and won the women’s bronze medal in Rio. (About a third of Chinese golfers are women, and the China LPGA tour has run a league there since 2008.) And golf equipment makers fantasize that one or more of them could break out and trigger a boom. About 10% of the adult U.S. population golfs; if China gets anywhere near that level, it would represent spectacular growth. As recently as 2011 and 2012, Callaway, Titleist, and other foreign brands were growing sales in China by 30% a year. Those gains have slowed, but as HSBC HSBC 1.14% once declared, golf is moving east.

PGA的顾凯森表示，一项关于高尔夫球场建设合法化的新议案即将被中央政府批准。尽管如此，这些规则目前仅征求了负责执行的地方政府的意见——对于已成惊弓之鸟的开发商来说，这并不是最有吸引力的前景。尽管政府将高尔夫列为面向中产阶级的娱乐性运动，以期推动经济增长，但这项运动在其优先事项中排名不高：在五年发展规划中，它的排名位于乒乓球和台球之间。

★

如今，高尔夫球在中国现在仍然是一项精英和专业人士的运动。不过，职业球手经常受到非精英的待遇。9月份的一天，在平安银行北京公开赛第二轮结束后，8位球手盯着各自的自助午餐发呆。俄克拉荷马人萨克逊当时领先一杆，但他脑子里想的，却是其他的事情。“今天的食物几乎没得选。”他注视着油腻的面条和浸泡在酱油中的蔬菜。酒店餐厅经理已经主动为每一位希望品尝家乡菜肴的球手订购了巨无霸汉堡。一位澳大利亚球手抓起一个，大口猛啃。

平安银行公开赛的举办地，坐落于距离北京1小时车程的山区之中。这是一座典型的中国系列赛球场——紧密的球道，波动的草坪，也带来了常见的沮丧。吃午饭的时候，即将当爸爸的澳大利亚人克里斯·布朗向记者叙述这个倒霉的日子。他在11洞时丢了一个球。“我抓了只小鸟，吞下三个柏忌，两个柏忌，打了个标准杆，然后又是三个柏忌！”

但是，作为中国系列赛最好的球手，窦泽成再次接近榜首位置。在今天的第一个洞，他的近距离切球穿越果岭边缘，直接入洞，打了一记漂亮的老鹰。“这个洞对他来说就像真空一样。”美国球手本·雷恩说。。

有人问，窦泽成在下一个级别的赛场上有多大的获胜几率。他能否在美巡赛获得成功？“他的表现不会差的。”萨克森说。每个人都点头认同。（财富中文网）

译者：Kevin

The PGA’s Carlson says a new legalization process for golf-course construction is close to being approved by the central government. Still, those rules are being shared only with local governments responsible for enforcing them—not the most enticing prospect for skittish developers. And while the government included golf among the recreational sports for the middle class that it’s promoting as an economic engine, the sport doesn’t rank very high among its priorities: In the five-year plan, it was listed between table tennis and billiards.

★

For now, golf in China remains a sport of elites and professionals. And the pros often face reminders that they aren’t yet elite. On a September day after the second round of the Ping An Bank Beijing Open, eight players stare at their Chinese buffet lunches. Saxon, the Oklahoman, has a one-shot lead, but his head is elsewhere. “Today the food options are slim,” he says, eyeing greasy noodles and vegetables soaked in soy sauce. The hotel restaurant’s manager has taken the initiative of ordering Big Macs for anyone wanting a taste of home. An Australian grabs one.

Located amid mountains an hour outside Beijing, the Ping An Open course is typical of the China Tour—tight fairways, undulating greens—and produces typical frustrations. At lunch, Chris Brown, an Australian with a baby on the way, is recounting his bad day. He lost a ball on the 11th. “I went birdie, triple [bogey], double, par, triple!”

But the best player in the league, Marty Dou, is again near the top of the leaderboard. On the first hole today, Marty’s approach shot rolled through the fringe and into the hole for eagle. “Man, the hole is like a vacuum for him. Swooomp,” says Ben Lein, an American who started his previous round hungover, played some of his best golf, and is thinking he should do it more often.

Someone asks what Marty’s chances are at the next level. Does he drive it long enough to make it in the U.S.? “He’ll be good,” says Saxon. Everyone nods. “Swooomp.”