China Golf, 中国高尔夫

Mission Hills

Shenzhen is home to hundreds of factories, one of China’s two mainland stock exchanges, a theme park called Window on the World that features more than 100 miniature versions of monuments like the Taj Mahal, a Soviet aircraft carrier, and, of course, the world’s largest golf resort: Mission Hills.

But this has not stopped the Mission Hills team from achieving another world record.

Last month, they opened the world’s largest practice putting green, a beautiful 17-acre spread of 18 rolling greens and tiny sand bunkers.

Already, the resort boasts 12 world-class golf courses designed by some of the most famous names in the game – Greg Norman, Vijay Singh, and Nick Faldo – and hosts major world tournaments.

Mission Hills is a curious mix of extreme luxury and developing world. It has three spas, 3,000 caddies (all of them women – to seem less intimidating to novice golfers – and all wearing red jumpsuits and plastic helmets). Some 2,000 rounds of golf are played here each day.

The resort abuts the city’s industrial outskirts, and to drive from one end of the resort to the other requires passing a vacuum sealing plant, an electronics factory, and acre upon acre of actively tilled peasant farmland.

Even the staff works to keep up.

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