It’s ironic that it took Dan Washburn eight years to take The Forbidden Game from first interview to publication. The irony is underscored by the amount of time it takes golf courses in China to progress from shovel to tee shot: fewer than two years. And that’s building five courses, on the same property, simultaneously.

With all of the stateside courses in various stage of development a decade ago, the prescient Washburn anticipated the growth of Chinese golf over the next 10 years and found the perfect subject to provide the inside dope. Golf course architecture insiders had known that Brian Curley and Lee Schmidt, former Pete Dye associates, had entered the Asian market in the 1990s, while the rest of the industry fattened itself on U.S. contracts. Washburn’s journey began partly with them.

Irony and mystery define the mere existence of golf across the land of the Red Dragon. China’s central political government vacillates between denying the existence of new golf courses, forbidding the building of new golf courses, and authorizing the building of new golf courses. If it all seems confusing in print, imagine how it plays out on the ground. Fortunately for the reader, Washburn does a stellar job of raising the blinds and connecting the dots.

The author’s task was not a simple one. In order to create this tone on the growth of a rich man’s game in a common man’s country, Washburn needed to navigate an indecipherable road map made hazy by a massive disconnect between national and local government officials, suspect methods for land acquisition by powerful development companies, and the nuances of a unique subculture in the throes of a transition from semi-feudal agrarian to neo-modern technological.

Dan Washburn identified three interesting individuals from all the potential candidates to symbolize the impact of the Scottish game in the Middle Kingdom:

• Zhou Xunshu, an aspiring professional golfer from the backwoods of Qixin, a mountain village in southwest China.
• Martin Moore, a golf course shaper-turned-project manager from Florida.
• Wang Libo, a non-golfer with no direct connection to the game, who found a way to profit from golf’s arrival on Hainan Island.

Washburn follows Zhou for a year as the self-made professional attempts to succeed as a touring professional. The author spends plenty of time with Moore, learning how a kid from Florida grows up to become a major mover in Asian golf course project development. From Wang, Dan Washburn uncovers the precarious balance between tradition and progress, and how an allegiance to one over the other might prove fortuitous or costly.

As enthralling as the three featured personages are, the list of cast members is enormous. No doubt the culling of characters included David and Kenneth Chu (although Washburn does his best to follow the scant information available) and the myriad local politicians who pushed these exercise and fitness developments through, under the noses of the national pols.

This brings us to the recently-announced purge of just over 60 courses on the mainland. A decade after the 2004 decree that a moratorium on golf courses had been established, the Chinese central government began to flex its muscles.

This actually seems to be one of the rare times that industry rumors ended up becoming reality. Last fall, everyone was abuzz with unofficial word of up to 100 courses being shut down in the coming year, part of a renewed effort to take the long ignored moratorium on course construction seriously. So this could just be the beginning. Course construction has already almost come to a complete halt. Now, the focus is on existing courses.

This is a weird time in China. Xi Jinping’s seemingly never-ending corruption crackdown has created a very tense and uncertain business and political climate.

In the U.S., golf courses receive an unfair share of criticism for environmental impact. There was a time when chemicals were applied haphazardly to make brown courses green, to eliminate insect and rodent pests, to kill off undesirable weeds. In recent decades, the industry has done an about-face and moved in a direction of stewardship. Run-off waters are far less tainted, if at all, by chemicals. Courses in California are reducing the acreage of cared-for land, replacing it with broken ground in spaces between tee and fairway, or in spots off the playing field. Courses are browning all over the country, highlighted by the Pinehurst #2 course in North Carolina, host to both the Women’s and Men’s U.S. Open championships in 2014. Is this the reality in China as well? If so, it’s certainly not the perception of the central government, according to Washburn.

[quote_box_center]The focus this time appears to be not just a golf course’s mere existence, but its impact on arable land and the water supply. These are valid concerns, especially in China, but who knows if these closures will really address those serious issues or just provide fodder for headlines. After all, golf courses account for a tiny, tiny sliver of the real estate development happening throughout rural China — but they seem to get a lot of the focus.[/quote_box_center]

If golf courses in China ever stand as monuments to the perseverance of the business elite, Washburn’s volume on the growth of the game will be recognized as a guidepost, if not the starting gate, for all future.