A US golf expert interviewed by one of my colleagues predicted that China will turn out a top world player in the next decade.

That is exciting news for the millions of Chinese golfers and fans. And it must be especially thrilling to sports officials since golf will be reinstated as an Olympic event in 2016.

However, the environmental damage caused by the growing number of golf courses in the country paints a dreadful picture of the sport played on beautiful green turf.

Two 18-holes built in Yulin, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, is the latest extreme example of how thousands of tons of water are used every day to irrigate a golf course in an area bordering a huge desert, while nearby farmers lack access to basic drinking water and have to leave their farmland untilled due to the shortage of water.

The Yulin facility is just one of hundreds of golf courses that have been built illegally in the country after the central government imposed a moratorium in 2004 in a bid to curb the high water consumption, encroachment of farmland and pollution caused by the use of fertilizers and pesticides by golf courses.

The rampant defiance of the moratorium has reflected how weak our law enforcement is, and how many loopholes there are in the legislation. Many of the golf courses have been built under a disguise, describing themselves as ecological parks or leisure centers. They carefully avoid using the word golf in the name.

At least 400 golf courses have been built in the past seven years since the government started its moratorium, bringing the total number of golf courses in the country to 600, according to a recent People's Daily report.

While severe penalties have been meted out to some illegal projects, the number of golf courses in China is likely to double in just a couple of years if no strong action is taken, according to industry analysts.

The situation is made even more complex because the construction of most illegal golf courses has been sanctioned and even encouraged by local governments, many of which believe golf courses help raise their city or county's image and help attract outside investors.

For many golf course developers, their real purpose is simply to boost nearby real estate prices. Their strategy is to snatch a big piece of land and build upscale property projects around a golf course.

In a country where two thirds of the cities lack sufficient water, the increasing number of high water consuming golf courses has indeed become a threat to the nation's future.

Encroachment of scarce farmland is also a threat. A Ministry of Land and Resources report shows that 18,300 hectares of farmland were used for illegal purposes last year, including building golf courses. The so-called red line - the 120 million hectares of farmland that experts believe are needed to feed 1.3 billion Chinese - is under threat, not to mention the public discontent caused by relocating many families in the acquisition of land.

Meanwhile, the heavy ecological footprints left by China's young but fast-expanding golf courses may soon become a source of tension in a country where scarcity of arable land and water has already become a top national threat.

On South China's Hainan Island, where new golf courses are allowed, the reckless construction has been criticized for the destruction of the local rainforests.

Even in the United States where per capita farmland is six times the Chinese average and where water resources are abundant compared with China, there has been call to minimize the negative environmental effects of the country's 16,000 golf courses.

Some environmentalists have even suggested that Tiger Woods was one of the worst things to happen to the environment because of the golf fever he created and the ensuing growth in the popularity of playing the sport.

The day China's own Tiger Woods emerges in the next few decades may also be the day that Chinese golfers find they are putting and chipping on turf surrounded by a huge desert, just like the one in Yulin.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily US edition. E-mail: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/30/2011 page8)