Business with pleasure: the history of golf in Hong Kong

With the exception of horse racing, few outdoor pastimes in Hong Kong enjoy as much social status as golf.

Golf also offers a useful adjunct to local business life. Its open-air nature allows confidential discussions to be held in a relaxed setting, without the danger of details being overheard or even (given the considerable distances between groups of players) lip-read.

The game, apparently, also provides a useful opportunity to observe someone close up, and thus helps enable an executive to judge an individual’s suitability for a role. Manners and general behaviour over post-game drinks at the “19th hole” also offer significant clues about an individual’s background and circumstances.

In all, a “casual” round of golf offers much more than simply whacking a little white ball along stretches of carefully irrigated, well-tended grassland.

As an added note of selectness, the game is seriously expensive in Hong Kong; club membership waiting lists are long, and can take over a decade to process. As the much-beloved local buzzword “exclusive” demonstrates, lengthy committee lists ultimately serve to keep certain people out.

The “royal and ancient game” has been enthusiastically played in Hong Kong since the colony’s earliest years; the first golf holes were located in the middle of the Happy Valley racecourse. Although the Royal Hong Kong Golf Club was formally established there in 1889, the sport had probably been played in that location for some years beforehand. Other courses soon followed; Deep Water Bay’s nine-hole links were laid out in 1898, and a private course at Shek O was developed in the 1920s, as an attraction for the residential development created there at that time.