Sandbelt Trails Course at Mission Hills Haikou, China – a course from ASGCA Vice President Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley, ASGCA – has made history by hosting the PGA Tour’s inaugural China Series tournament.
The event, the Mission Hills Haikou Open, is one of 12 being conducted in 2014 by the PGA Tour and China Golf Association.
Golf Business News quoted Curley as saying, “We are honoured that the Sandbelt Trails Course at Mission Hills Haikou was selected for such a historic tournament. The Mission Hills Haikou Open will go down in the record books as a key moment in the development of the professional game in the world’s most populous country.”
The event was won at a canter by highly-rated Korean teenager JH Wang who blew away the field with a 23-under-par aggregate of 265. That was 10 strokes clear of second-placed Zhang Xinjun of China.
Opened in 2010, Sandbelt Trails’ wide playing corridors encourage second-shot creativity into large, undulating greens. Fairways and putting surfaces are frequently flanked by yawning, high-flashed bunkers, evoking its Australian influences of revered courses such as Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, and Metropolitan Golf Club.
Many of the players in the Mission Hills Haikou Open field were already well acquainted with the Sandbelt Trails Course, which hosted the China Series’ second qualifying tournament last month, won by Australian Alex Hawley.
The entire “Golf Business News” article can be found here.