Golf is considered a rich man’s sport, but about 400 elementary students in Shanghai City are attending compulsory golf classes once a week since the spring semester.
Since Feb. 18, all first- and second-grade students of the Experimental School of Foreign Languages are required to practice golf once a week, reported China Daily. It makes the students the first public elementary school in the country to have golf lessons.
In introducing the sport, Xia Haiping, principal of the school affiliated to East China Normal University, explained that golf is not a high-class game exclusive to rich people. He wants the popular game to be accessible to all.
Since the class was launched by the school and the Century Teenage Golf Program, the students taking the course are not charged extra tuition fees. The students are saving a lot since it cost an average of 300 to 700 yuan ($46 to $108) to hire a private golf tutor.
Xia said that the sport was added to the school syllabus to improve conditions for junior students and help them with etiquette. Now, some parents are hoping it would put their kids at an advantage when they apply for university overseas.
Since then, there are now more than 30 Chinese schools, in the elementary and secondary private and public schools systems that have golf as physical education lessons. In 2013, there were about 32,000 junior golfers in China, and their number keeps on going up, according to Forward Management Group, a sports management company.
However, fondness for golf has been blamed for the downfall of a former senior officials of a big state-owned Chinese company as part of the anti-corruption drive of Beijing. Wu Shuyuan, deputy general manager of BENEFO Corp., a mechanical engineering company based in Tianjin, was fired from his job and expelled from the Communist Party in February for forgery.
Wu has accepted too many times invitations from others to play golf. Shady deals are said to take place in golf courses, reported Channelnews Asia.