--File--cinese giocatore di golf Feng Shanshan è raffigurato durante il primo mondo Ladies campionato nel centro della città di Haikou, sud Chinas Hainan provincia, 2 Marzo 2
--File--Chinese golf player Feng Shanshan is pictured during the 1st World Ladies Championship in Haikou city, south Chinas Hainan province, 2 March 2012. China, a country once renowned for its proletarian pride, is experiencing a surge in that most patrician of sports: golf. Over the weekend, 22-year-old Chinese golfer Feng Shanshan claimed womens golfs LPGA Championship title by shooting 6-under-par for the week, becoming the first Chinese player to win a major tour event and title. As if that werent enough, 14-year-old Chinese golfer Andy Zhang made history of his own on Monday (11 June 2012) by becoming the youngest player ever to qualify for this weeks U.S. Open after Briton Paul Casey withdrew because of a shoulder injury. The triumphs of Feng and Zhang are a boon to Chinas global sporting ambitions, though theyre the sort of development that probably sets Mao Zedongs waxen body to spinning it its glass case on Tiananmen Square. Despite some claims that the sport was invented in China, golf was banned under Mao as a bourgeois indulgence. Even now, with the Communist Party having embraced entrepreneurs and luxury brands rushing to cater to the countrys nouveau riche, the sport remains a somewhat controversial hobby due to concerns over the growing tracts of precious arable land being appropriated to build courses.
