Things we bet you did not know about Mission Hills, the Chinese venue for golf's World Cup
FROM THE US PGA TOUR WEBSITE
By Laury Livsey, PGA TOUR Staff
DONGGUAN, China -- Turn to the Guinness Book of World Records, skip past the picture of the fat twins sitting on the motorcycles, ignore the entry about the oldest guy in history to tandem-parachute and forget about finding out how tall Robert Pershing Wadlow was and eventually you'll find a listing in the seminal tome for "The Largest Golf Club in the World."
While Bjarne Maeland may have parachuted from a plane at the tender age of 100 and Wadlow checked in just an inch under 9 feet, Mission Hills Golf Club, it of the 12 golf courses spread over two Chinese cities -- Shenzhen and Dongguan -- holds the Guinness distinction, surpassing the Pinehurst resort in North Carolina.
Yes, Mission Hills is the largest in the world, thanks to Dr. David Chu, the brains and money behind the complex, and Chu's coterie of course designers: Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Annika Sorenstam, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Nick Faldo, Jose Maria Olazabal, David Duval, Jumbo Ozaki, Zhang Lian-wei, David Leadbetter and Pete Dye.
Besides the star-studded lineup of architects, the folks at the complex located in Guangdong Province are also happy to point out that while it took Pinehurst 100 years to add its eighth course, No. 12 came on board at Mission Hills in the tenth year of the club's existence.
So, in honour of the Golden Bear, the Big Easy, Jumbo, Ms. 59, the Great White Shark, Ollie and everybody else who put their touches on designs here, we give you 12 fun facts, one for every course at Mission Hills (what, you thought we were going to come up with 216 items, one for each hole at the place?).
• The 12 Mission Hills courses employ 2,500 caddies -- all female and all in their late teens or early 20s -- who live in club-provided dormitories, six per room. With attrition factored in, the club recruits approximately 150 to 200 new caddies every year. Coco Hu from Hunan Province, has been a caddie for six years, starting when she was 18. She caddies an average of 23 rounds a month and has started to play golf herself. "I get to play once a month, and I'm still learning," she said. "The Annika Course is my favorite because it's the course done by a woman."
• Every caddie attends Mission Hills' Caddie Training Academy before ever toting a bag for real. The CTA is a three-and-a-half month school that introduces the fledgling caddies to a sport almost all of them knew nothing about before they began their employment. They first learn golf terminology in Chinese (Can you say "rescue club" in Mandarin?) and then learn the English equivalent. It's safe to say that most of the caddies who enter the program don't know a sand wedge from a sand castle. But a little more than 90 days later, and they're good to go. "I had not even heard about Tiger Woods before I began," says Katie Xia from Chongqing in the Sichuan Province, who has been caddying since 2006.
• The caddies all wear red trousers and red jackets because red in China is considered a lucky color. The club also offers, at additional cost to golfers, "golden" caddies, who happen to be the best and most-experienced among the 2,500. They wear gold uniforms because it is the color of royalty in China.
• Because of the distances between many of the greens and tees at all the courses, a caddie and cart are mandatory. Also in the distance department, so big is the course that 15 kilometers (a little more than nine miles) separate the Olazabal Course, site of this week's OMEGA Mission Hills World Cup, from the Nicklaus Course, the host of the 1995 World Cup, the first time professional golf came to Mission Hills.
• The first five courses built at Mission Hills had a distinct purpose behind them. They were designed by five men from different parts of the world: Nicklaus (North America), Els (Africa), Singh (Oceania), Ozaki (Asia) and Faldo (Europe).
• At the facility's Shenzhen clubhouse, a cement-and-marble staircase was torn apart, moved to a different location and rebuilt after a feng shui expert came in and decided it wasn't in keeping with the Chinese art or practice of positioning objects to promote positive or negative effects. We'll guess that particular set of stairs fell into the "negative" category.
• Feng shui (the Chinese words for "wind" and "water") also is the reason why the main entry doors to the Dongguan clubhouse never close during operating hours -- regardless of the weather. It also explains why Mission Hills' workers carry battery-operated, tennis racquet-looking devices to zap flies that dare enter the premises.
• What are the chances "Caddyshack" would have been as funny had Carl Spackler had to worry about large, undomesticated game animals instead of gophers? While the rodents of the big screen caused all sorts of trouble at fictional Bushwood Country Club, the biggest mischief-makers at Mission Hills are wild boars living in the nearby jungles. The tusked, omnivores come out at night and occasionally dig up the course. In case you were wondering, yes, ham, pork and bacon dishes are available in various Mission Hills restaurants.
• During the building of the Faldo course, a local farmer told construction workers to stop what they were doing so he could sort out an issue that was causing him some concern. While the farmer allowed that the property where a lake near his farm was located did belong to the club, he insisted the fish inside the lake were his. After some negotiations, Mission Hills administration capitulated, allowed the man to get out his nets, catch the fish and transplant them in a lake on his property.
• Five of Mission Hills' courses -- Norman, Leadbetter, Annika, Duval and Olazabal -- were built simultaneously. From start to finish, construction of the 90 holes took 14 months. "We had 30,000 labourers on site during that time," said Glenn Stokes, a native of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Mission Hills' golf operations manager. "It was something to see."
• In 2007, the courses saw more than 504,000 rounds played over 365 days. In 2008, the 12 Mission Hills courses are tracking just ahead of that figure with five weeks left in the year.
• Japan, Korea and Australia have more golfers traveling to Mission Hills to play than any other countries. Coco Hu acknowledges, though, that the best score she ever witnessed while caddying was a 63 on the Annika Course by a man from just down the road in Hong Kong. No word on what Coco's tip was that day