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Martin Moore was confused. He was back in China, in the thick of the most ambitious golf course construction project in history, and trying to figure out what the rush was. He had already assembled the largest team ever for a single golf construction job. He had already come up with the most aggressive schedule anyone in the industry had ever heard of. But it never seemed to be enough for David Chu and his son Ken, the men behind the massive Mission Hills golf complex near the southern city of Shenzhen. They were always pushing him to move faster, faster, FASTER. Martin knew every detail about the project – right down to each bulldozer and every grain of sand – but he couldn’t help but feel there was a lot of information beyond his grasp. Why the unreasonable deadline? Why all the secrecy? Why the late night meetings and sleepless nights? It was as if the Chus knew something no one else did.

When Martin first learned of the job from his business partner Brian Curley he was intrigued, but he was also taken aback. Not only did Mission Hills Vice Chairman Ken Chu want to build five courses simultaneously, he also wanted them to be built in one year. Nothing like that had ever been done before. Not even close.

“I thought it was unbelievable,” Martin said. “I mean, just to build five courses at one time, and then to say you’re doing them in one year? Unbelievable.”

Mission Hills already had five courses, which were built over a much more manageable nine-year period that started in 1992. For the second batch of five, Martin initially put together an eighteen-month plan for Chu, and he thought that was still a tad unrealistic. He explained to Chu that while building five courses simultaneously, especially under such strict time constraints, would normally be next to impossible, building one course in a year-and-a-half is a realistic goal. So, the only way they would be able to turn Chu’s vision into reality would be to treat the five courses as separate projects. Five different teams building five different courses that happened to be part of the same golf club. Martin presented Chu with a spreadsheet listing the roster of talent he thought would be necessary to get the job done – it was the longest such list he’d ever seen in his life. Dozens upon dozens of names, representing much of the world’s golf course construction industry. The cost would be colossal.

“Confirmed!” was all Chu had to say. “But I need it done in one year.”

Martin still thought it was implausible. But he didn’t know “Mission Hills’ style” yet. And he certainly didn’t know what to expect from the twenty-nine-year-old Ken Chu. Martin told Chu that the ball was in his court. There were approximately forty million cubic yards (thirty million cubic meters) of dirt that needed moving before Martin’s guys could get started.

“When the contractor pulls out three hundred dump trucks and sixty excavators, you can get anything done,” Martin said. “They’re working twenty hours a day.”

Martin had always held up what his team did with Landmark Golf Club in Indio, California, as a benchmark. They broke ground on the thirty-six-hole layout in December, and finished construction in nine-and-a-half months. By the following November, the course hosted a nationally televised tournament. That feat was beginning to look like child’s play compared to what he was witnessing at Mission Hills.

“Probably three or four months into it, it’s like, ‘Wow,’” Martin said. “That’s when I started to become a little bit of a believer in it.” Chu could not be stopped.

*

At a press conference in November 2002, Mission Hills announced its plans to expand from five to ten courses, a move the club claimed would vault it past North Carolina’s fabled Pinehurst Golf Resort – where eight courses were built over more than a century – as the largest golf resort in the world. A few months after the press conference, in early 2003, the Mission Hills website stated: “Pinehurst, currently the largest golf club of the world, will soon be replaced by Mission Hills, the only private golf club in the world to own 180 holes. Mission Hills has made a name of itself in the world of golf and has created its own legend.”

Indeed, there is a little legend (and perhaps some myth) behind Mission Hills’ story. The tale starts with Hong Kong entrepreneur David Chu, who is commonly credited as the mastermind behind the operation. By most accounts, he was a self-made man. He owned a successful cardboard packaging factory in Hong Kong and, according to family members, began operating in mainland China even before Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, which kicked off in late 1978. Many say it was during these early years operating in Guangdong province that Chu learned the rules of guanxi, or connections, that determine who is able to do business in China, and who is not. No one would take the word of a stranger, but the word of a friend or relative of a Party official – that was another matter entirely.

In the 1980s, David Chu had decided to move his family to Toronto, buying a house in a golf community, Glendale Golf and Country Club, despite having little interest in the game. But something about the experience must have clicked with him, because by the end of the decade he was itching to build a golf community of his own, less than an hour north of Hong Kong in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, which in 1980 was named China’s first “special economic zone” with lenient free-market-style policies designed to attract foreign investment. “Back in the early nineties, prior to China taking over Hong Kong in 1997, Deng Xiaoping wanted to expedite Shenzhen’s development,” Ken Chu explained. Shenzhen was seen as the “first door to Hong Kong” – the place where East and West would meet. Traditionally, associates in China would congregate with karaoke, or “do business [at] the mah-jongg table,” Ken said, and the new wave of investors arriving in Hong Kong, and even the special economic zone, didn’t fit comfortably into either setting. In Toronto, David Chu had seen how businessmen used golf as a networking tool, and although only a handful of people on the mainland played golf, he figured it was only a matter of time before the practice would become commonplace. Guanxi and golf seemed like a perfect fit. But land in Hong Kong was scarce. Shenzhen was the ideal location for his golf venture, within reasonable driving distance for 150 million or so people, including wealthy Hong Kongers.

Mission Hills occupies a large swath of mountainous woodland in Guangdong province that spills over into Shenzhen and another major manufacturing city, Dongguan. The entire sprawling complex takes up 4,950 acres, nearly six times the size of New York City’s Central Park. The resort even has its own public transportation system, with a bus system shuttling members, guests and employees from one side to another.

When David Chu identified the tract of land that would become the home of his golf empire, many were highly skeptical. “Yeah, today everyone compliments us as visionaries, but back then people thought we were crazy,” said Ken, years later, who was just a teenager when his father purchased the remote expanse in one of the poorest parts of Guangdong. “I also thought it was crazy. Why choose this land? It’s so underdeveloped. You hardly see people on the street, even in nearby Guanlan town. There were less than ten thousand people in the town back then.” And none of them played golf.

Indeed, that posed a big problem for the site – there were no major roads connecting Mission Hills with… anything. “Shenzhen city to here used to take four hours,” Ken remembered. “Back then, in the early nineties, it was all bicycles. Definitely, we had really hard times in the earlier days. I mean, as low as a hundred players per month.” Ken crammed four years of study into two at Western Ontario University so he could race back to Hong Kong to help his father steer the fledgling golf club.

The Chus said the club’s growth was organic. “We built as the demand grew,” Ken recalled. “We did not build it for the ego. Purely for the market demand.” But he also doesn’t shy away from saying that Mission Hills played a large role in driving that demand. The family likes to claim that the number of golfers in China doubled after the World Cup of Golf was played at Mission Hills in 1995, and that the number doubled yet again after they brought Tiger Woods to China in 2001.

Tiger’s first trip to China, back when he was just twenty-five and coming off his second win at the Masters, almost didn’t happen. It was scheduled just two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and security concerns had already forced the cancellation of an Evander Holyfield–John Ruiz boxing match scheduled for Beijing in late November. It was determined, however, that China at that time was just about the safest place in the world to be. So the show went on, much to the relief of the Chus, who had been planning the spectacle for nearly eighteen months.

The weekend event, scheduled to coincide with the announcement of China’s ascension into the World Trade Organization, was intended to stimulate the growth of golf in a country barely aware of the sport’s existence. “We wanted to spark interest in the game, especially among junior golfers,” explained John Cappo, former managing director of China operations for IMG Golf, one of the event’s organizers. “It was our belief that to do that, you must first create major golf events in China, so people have something to aspire to.”

On the first day, Tiger held a clinic for a few dozen local golfers and played in an exhibition stroke-play match against four of the top pros from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The following day, he played another round, this time paired with a different group of amateurs at each hole.

It proved to be a hot ticket – and a pricey one. Entry was around $130 per day, and while it’s unclear how many of the 100,000 or so attendees (estimates vary greatly) actually paid face value, local news reports called the exhibition the most expensive sporting event in Chinese history.

Tiger received some $2 million for his time, and paid $500,000 in local Chinese taxes, according to media reports. The following year, it was widely reported he was the top taxpayer in Shenzhen for 2001. Many thought the statistic was more a commentary on the rampant tax evasion among wealthy Chinese, than on the size of Tiger’s paycheck.

To be sure, Tiger was not the only person at Mission Hills that weekend with deep pockets. Well-heeled amateurs paid as much as $80,000 to play a single hole with the world’s best golfer. Wealthy parents paid anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 per hole to give their children a chance to go toe-to-toe with Tiger. And Duan Yongping, chairman of Guangdong-based BBK Electronics, signed his company on as title sponsor of the event with the stipulation he could golf all eighteen holes with the superstar. (Five years later, Duan would make headlines for spending $620,100 to have lunch with Warren Buffet.)

There were distractions galore for anyone carrying a golf club. Mission Hills was a madhouse. Traffic was backed up for miles on the highway leading to the golf club. Parking lots were overflowing, and hundreds of ticket holders raced to the venue on foot.

The scene inside was just as crazy. Golf in China was only seventeen years old at the time, and golf etiquette was just as foreign as the game itself. Spectators barreled through bunkers. Kids rolled down hills and played in the sand. If people weren’t snapping photographs, they were shouting into their mobile phones. Organizers made repeated announcements pleading with the fans to settle down: You don’t want to embarrass China, they said.

*

This was all part of the Mission Hills legend. But there are other aspects of the company’s story that are rarely discussed. There is the scandal from 2002, when, according to the South China Morning Post, an investor called Harry Lam Hon-lit was “executed” just two days before a “hearing of a multi-million-dollar legal dispute between Lam’s Digger Holdings and the Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen.” Lam was killed “gangland-style,” according to the AP’s report, with a single shot to the head as he took his breakfast at his usual teahouse in central Hong Kong. He had recently filed a request to stop construction at Missions Hills, citing a fight over the valuation of his shares in the development. It was very bad timing. The Chus found themselves fielding calls from reporters, and with the legal case still moving forward, chose to make no detailed public comments. Rumors spread that the killers were linked to the People’s Liberation Army, or a kung fu movie actor-turned-tycoon. Eventually, six people were convicted – including the tycoon – but no motive was ever established for the murder.

Other omissions are less sensational. Nowhere in the official Mission Hills history will you learn about the club’s Thailand connections, or its two additional founding partners, men who appeared to be just as integral, if not more, to launching the club as David Chu was. They’ve been erased from the official record. For instance, a South China Morning Post story from early 1993 says it was Elmer Yuen, described as a Shanghainese man “who made his money from a digital electronics business in Hong Kong,” who acquired two thousand acres of land near Guanlan town in 1992 with the goal of creating the “best suburb of Shenzhen.” Yuen told the paper he estimated an investment of $700 million would be necessary to develop the golf course and luxury housing development.

The story mentioned Yuen’s successful golf venture in Thailand, Mission Hills Golf Club in Kanchanaburi, which opened in 1991 with a Jack Nicklaus-designed track “touted as one of the best courses in the country.” Thailand is where the third piece of the Mission Hills puzzle resided, a former Hong Kong boarding school classmate of Yuen’s who is credited with convincing him that “golf was synonymous with riches.” That man, the other original partner, was a wiry Thai-Chinese tycoon with sunken cheeks and a temper: Suraphan Ngamjitsuksri.

In fact, David Chu gets third billing in the story. A 2001 court document related to Yuen’s divorce from his second wife, on the other hand, paints a different picture. It states that the Mission Hills development in China was Chu’s idea, and suggests the trio’s initial investment totaled ten million dollars, with 55 percent to come from Chu, 30 percent from Suraphan and 15 percent from Yuen. The document also mentions that “relations between the partners were becoming strained” by the end of 1994. The reasons for this were partly due to “a dispute over the timing of the sale of properties built at Mission Hills, but also because the project had cash flow problems.” (Harry Lam Hon-lit allegedly held 3 percent at the time of his murder – or so he was claiming to the court.)

Given the order in which the Thailand and China Mission Hills projects opened, even the origin of the club’s name is up for debate. Ken Chu maintains it was inspired by the Shenzhen property itself. “We had a vision, we had a mission, and then there’s lots of hills,” he offered. “We pasted that together.” Whether spawned in China or Thailand, many in the golf industry always assumed the name was inspired by, if not outright copied from, well-known golf courses in the United States. There’s Mission Hills Country Club, founded in 1926, in Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. And then there’s another unrelated Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, that since 1983 has been home to the Kraft Nabisco Championship, one of the five annual major tournaments in women’s professional golf.

It’s not uncommon for Chinese clubs to borrow the names of well-known golf courses from the West. For example, China has its own Pebble Beach and Pine Valley – but Ken says his club’s familiar name was a coincidence. “Back in the early 1990s, internet was inaccessible,” he said. “We did not even know that club [in California] existed.”

Still, it’s clear the Mission Hills name and logo were in use in Thailand years before the brand ever landed in China. Indeed, Martin Moore had helped build one of the original Mission Hills courses for Suraphan in Thailand – Mission Hills Khao Yai, his first job in Asia.

Martin recalled a day in 1992 in Thailand when Suraphan pulled him aside and said, “Martin, come have dinner with me tonight in our village home. I have some friends from Hong Kong I’d like you to meet.” Elmer Yuen was the first person Martin was introduced to. The other man in attendance, Martin was told, owned a cardboard box factory in mainland China, just outside of Hong Kong. It was David Chu.

Martin’s first impression of David Chu was unremarkable. He just seemed like a regular Chinese businessman. He didn’t carry himself as though he had a lot of money – there was no hint he’d one day be one of the biggest golf developers in the world. In fact, it was clear to Martin that Suraphan was the driver of this particular train. Yuen and Chu appeared to occupy secondary roles.

“I want to build a Mission Hills in Shenzhen, China,” Suraphan later confided in Martin. “With those two men you met last night.”

He paused, then added, “Do you want to go to China?” He was trying to steal Martin away.

“I’m staying in Thailand,” Martin said definitively.

The first course at Mission Hills Shenzhen, the World Cup Course, was a Nicklaus design, and many of the workers on the project reported that Suraphan was the one primarily calling the shots. But once the World Cup Course was complete, sources said, the trio began to butt heads – not difficult to believe with Suraphan in the mix. The Thai “enforcer” was forced out. The China operation got to keep the name and logo, and Suraphan, according to someone familiar with the deal, got “a boat load of cash.”

Suraphan did manage to leave his imprint at Mission Hills Shenzhen, however. The original clubhouse there was designed by Suraphan’s architect. In fact, it’s almost an exact replica of the clubhouse at Mission Hills Khao Yai, the course Martin built for him.

Ken Chu acknowledged the existence of three original partners, but of Yuen and Suraphan he simply said, “They left.” He added, “By 1994, when the club pretty much opened, they didn’t have faith in this project.” It’s clear David Chu, now referred to by some as “the father of golf in China,” was the last man standing. And that was all that mattered.

*

Ken Chu was attending the University of Western Ontario in Canada when the first course at Mission Hills opened, and was not yet thirty when they opened their fifth. By the time plans for the next batch of five came to pass, he wanted to make sure it was clear the torch had been passed. He wanted to be the guy calling the shots. Some onlookers felt Ken Chu thought he had something to prove, to his father and everyone else. The first five courses were built in nine years? Well, he was going to do the next five in one.

Ken was by far the most vocal and visible member of the Chu family during the project, but some suspected David Chu was still the mastermind behind the growing family business and that the desire to be the biggest and the best at everything started with him. It was rare to see David out on the work site during construction, however. Although he lived nearby and was bankrolling the project, he only showed up about once a month. Instead, Ken would meet with his father with daily updates. It was clear to Martin he was being groomed to take over the empire. “He would’ve been the most mature thirty-two-year-old you’d ever meet in your life,” Martin said. “His father was polishing him early.”

Ken Chu had a confidence and business savvy that belied his age. He was driven, photogenic, well spoken. He was always immaculately dressed, with a vast wardrobe of tailored suits, as well as luxury watches and designer eyeglasses matched to each ensemble. Even when he was just wearing trousers and a golf shirt at the job site he looked put together. When he walked into a meeting, he commanded – and frequently demanded – respect.

Ken was “a pusher,” Martin said. He was the kind of guy who “expected eighteen hours a day from you.” He was fond of calling last-minute, late-night meetings he’d routinely show up an hour late for. “I think he thrives on six white guys and ten other Chinese guys having to wait on him,” another person familiar with the meetings said. It was not uncommon for him to arrive to these meetings in a designer suit. The rest of the guys, wearing shorts and T-shirts, would smile every time they caught him adjusting his tie in the mirror.

Ken mandated a record-breaking construction schedule that was difficult enough, but it was the mountainous terrain that really made things tough. Designer Brian Curley called it “one of the most brutal properties” he’d ever seen.

“Those sites, you couldn’t even walk them,” Curley said, noting the land’s steep “up and down” slopes. “You’ve got to manhandle the property just to get it to something that resembles land that would tolerate golf. So you can argue that, sure, it was open space. Sure, it was covered in trees and all that, but now that we’re done with it all, the thing is still open space and still covered with trees. It’s just that you’re playing golf through it.”

Before-and-after photos of the property are hardly recognizable as the same location. Curley said it wasn’t unusual “to find a mountain gone overnight.” A massive team of laborers, using heavy machinery, moved thirty million cubic meters of earth in just eight months. Curley said the site often required dynamite blasts three times a day and that “it would rain rock for huge distances.”

Martin recalled that Curley impressed Mission Hills with master-planning and “big picture stuff.” Few architects could manage the mammoth challenges that came with working with a client like Ken Chu, where everything needed to be big – bigger than anything else in the world – and done yesterday. Curley was efficient, adaptable and fast as hell. “Brian will pull out a fucking napkin at lunchtime and route eighteen holes,” Martin said. “If that guy would have given him a ‘topo’ right there on that table, Brian would’ve given him about two routing options during lunchtime. He’s just got an eye for that.”

Then Curley would go back to his office and have one of his assistants draw it up in color, complete with cart paths, roads and housing, and have it delivered to the potential client in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Martin said Curley had been successful in China because of this approach. Other foreign designers might say, “We’ll get that to you in thirty to forty-five days.” Chinese businessmen don’t want to wait that long. People who can turn around plans in a day or two have a decidedly upper hand. “In China, they want that shit, man,” he said.

But Brian Curley’s speed alone could not handle every obstacle Mother Nature threw their way. From May to September 2003, Martin’s crew had to work through southern China’s summer monsoon season and large amounts of rain. To make matters worse, the construction calendar also overlapped with the outbreak of the SARS epidemic. At least three people on the work site came down with the virus.

The Mission Hills mythology even goes so far as to credit SARS for helping the game gain traction in China. Ken Chu likes to tell the story that during the outbreak, golf courses, thanks to their fresh air and open spaces, replaced boardrooms as places where business deals went down. This, the Chus say, was just one more reason Mission Hills needed to expand.

Part of the plan was to have the five new courses designed by some of the biggest names in golf. The five original courses at Mission Hills had been attached to names like Jack Nicklaus, Vijay Singh, Jumbo Ozaki, Nick Faldo and Ernie Els. Those eighteen-hole layouts were completed over the course of nine years, a timeline that allowed for a good bit of back-and-forth between the big-name designers and Mission Hills regarding the look and feel of the course.

This was not the case with the following five courses, which had to be built in a fraction of the time. There was little way the celebrity designers would be able to have much input into the courses that would bear their names. And, for the most part, they didn’t. Using his handy napkin as a start, Curley and his partner Schmidt routed and designed all ninety holes. Construction began even before the involvement of Annika Sörenstam, David Duval, David Leadbetter, Jose Maria Olazabal and Greg Norman was finalized. A few of the celebrities made some site visits and talked strategy with Curley. But others rarely even looked at the plans, only showing up for the grand opening and to pick up their check. Despite what the signposts read, these were all Schmidt-Curley designs – except for one.

David Chu insisted that Greg Norman be one of the names attached to a course, a move that threw the construction schedule somewhat of a curveball, because Norman was the sole designer to demand considerable say on the actual design of his course. Normally this wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but the courses were nearly halfway complete by the time Norman got involved.

Norman, who was given first pick of the courses, sent his top designers to Mission Hills to scope out the property and determine which track deserved the Greg Norman name. Norman’s team did not appear to be in a hurry, and their relaxed Down Under temperament did not mesh well with the project’s manic timeframe. They spent a few days moseying around the place, but instead of making an immediate choice, said they had to go back to Australia to talk things over. The clock was ticking.

After several weeks, Norman’s team made its choice: perhaps the most picturesque and challenging layout available, it snakes through steep ridges, severe hills and dense forests. They asked for some slight changes to the routing, and indicated that they would provide a new plan for grading the land (which, for the most part, had already been graded according to a different design). One month went by. Two months. Three months. In this building frenzy, it felt like an eternity.

When the grading plan eventually arrived, Mission Hills learned that Norman’s team wanted the course to be as many as five meters lower than it currently was. That meant three million cubic meters of dirt had to find a new home. That’s a lot of dirt, a whole golf course’s worth. It was moved to a nearby layout, one bearing David Leadbetter’s name. That course had to be completely reshaped to take on the dirt. Everyone was feeling the pressure.

Mission Hills was determined to avoid any more delays, and hoped there wouldn’t be any last-minute changes coming from the course designers. So, after one of the final site visits by Norman’s team, a construction crew was ready to pounce. It wasn’t the typical golf course construction crew – it was the largest one ever assembled. Two thousand people were assigned to that one course, and they worked on it almost nonstop for two months straight. What would normally have taken months happened in mere days. Mission Hills was keeping to its deadline, no matter what came its way.

Twenty-one days later, grass was growing on the entire course. When Norman’s team returned, they were amazed. They expected to see a landscape of dirt. Instead, all they saw was green.

The reasons behind the hurried timetable remained a mystery to almost everyone working on the project, and the niceties-be-damned approach to getting things done sometimes led to crossed wires. Midway through the project, Martin learned that a group of Mission Hills’ security guards had started spying on his workers in a bizarre effort to make sure they were putting in enough time on the job. The guards kept logbooks, documenting the hours each person worked – or at least that is what they thought they were doing. One day a dumbfounded Martin got chewed out for not being organized, for having a lazy team. Martin had no idea what they were talking about, so out came the notebooks. It turned out none of the numbers in the books were accurate – the guards couldn’t tell the Thai shapers apart. The worksite was hot and dusty, and the shapers often covered their faces with scarves. Even Martin, who had known the workers for years, had to yell, “Who’s that?” before approaching someone behind the wheel of a bulldozer.

Martin wasn’t sure where the distrust stemmed from. “I guess it’s a China thing, I don’t know,” he said. “These guys were working their asses off. We’re already seven or eight months into the project and we’re on track to break the record for building five golf courses. What is there to complain about?”

*

When Zhou Xunshu first arrived at Yiganxing Golf Club in Guangzhou, workers there assumed he was the boss’s new bodyguard. That was before they saw him put on a display at the driving range. “Back then, my irons were very accurate,” Zhou said. “I think they were impressed.” Not long after he walked away from Guangzhou International, Zhou scored a job as Yiganxing’s driving range supervisor. It wasn’t his dream job, but he viewed it as a step in the right direction. Keep moving forward, Zhou told himself. Keep moving.

Zhou soon learned that the China Golf Association had two official designations for golf professionals: “pro golfer” and “pro coach.” The titles had only existed for a decade in China, and either one represented another step up for Zhou, with the promise of a better job and better pay. “Pro golfer” was the more prestigious of the two, and while there were a variety of ways to achieve this coveted status, most seemed unrealistic for someone like him. You could become a pro by being selected to represent China in an international team event like the Asian Games, but Zhou thought, at thirty-two, he was likely too old to be considered for something like that. Or you could earn the title by finishing in the top three of an official CGA-sanctioned tournament, but Zhou wasn’t aware of too many of those open to domestic players – it seemed far-fetched, out of reach. There was a third option, however, and that was to take a test.

The test was expensive, and notoriously difficult. It was four rounds of play on one of Guangdong’s toughest courses, and it was almost always scheduled during monsoon season, when wind was often a factor. Golfers who averaged a score of 74 or better for the four rounds passed the test – a very rare occurrence. Zhou didn’t have much money at the time, so he decided instead to take the test for pro coach certification, which was both easier and cheaper.

He passed. He was officially on his way.

Zhou’s new distinction was followed quickly by a new job. Dragon Lake Golf Club, a beautiful course nestled amongst lush mountains about an hour north of Guangzhou, had recently opened, and Zhou was among its first hires. He was given a dual role: golf instructor and manager of operations. His new salary, which included housing, was five thousand yuan a month, five times more than he was earning as a security guard just two years earlier. The extra cash would come in handy, because soon Zhou would have someone else to spend it on.

Zhou and Liu Yan started work at Dragon Lake on the same day, but they didn’t really talk until later in the summer. It was July 21, a Wednesday, and the sun was bright in the sky. Liu Yan was a caddie, still in her teens, more than a decade younger than Zhou.

Zhou’s boss had asked him to take photographs of every hole on the course that day. A caddie was expected to travel with him to hold an umbrella and protect Zhou from the powerful sun. That morning another girl had been scheduled to hold the umbrella, but she was nowhere to be found. Liu Yan happened to be standing nearby, and a foreman asked that she accompany Zhou. She protested at first – holding an umbrella for a boss on such a hot day did not sound like fun – but the foreman insisted.

As it happened, this was not the first time Zhou had taken notice of Liu Yan. She stood out among the other female caddies: tall, slender and beautiful, with a big friendly smile that put him at ease. The two started chatting during their trip around the course, and, hole by hole, Zhou got slower and slower at taking the photos so they would have more time together. At the end of the day, he asked Liu Yan for her phone number. Not one to play games with personal matters, that night he sent her a text message asking if she wanted to have dinner with him. Liu Yan knew Zhou was technically her boss, and she thought it would simply be a meal between coworkers, a thank-you for filling in for her AWOL colleague. So she brought a friend along – might as well have Dragon Lake pick up the tab for both of them, she thought.

“I did not expect we’d start dating,” Liu Yan said. Later, she would say that being assigned to the last-minute photo session was yuan fen, or fate.

Liu Yan was more independent than many Chinese girls her age – she had gone off on her own in search of a job, after all – but she was from a small village in Hunan province, and wanted some aspects of her life to have a traditional feel to them. The courting process lasted months. When Zhou and Liu Yan would go on “dates,” usually dinners near the course or shopping trips to Guangzhou, they were never alone. Even though it was now clear they were more than colleagues, Liu Yan always brought one of her friends along to chaperone.

“I spent lots of money!” Zhou recalled good-humoredly. “I had to buy dinner every day, for three people.”

To add to Zhou’s frustration, their three-person outings were always cut short by the 10 p.m. curfew in place at Liu Yan’s employee dormitory. The dorm was only five hundred yards or so away from where Zhou lived, but after curfew she might as well have lived in Hong Kong. The nights grew longer and longer for Zhou, who anxiously awaited each dawn and the chance to lay eyes on the caddie he was falling in love with.

By the autumn, it was clear to both Zhou and Liu Yan where things were headed, and during a conversation – between just the two of them, finally – they decided to make their relationship official. They became boyfriend and girlfriend. Their talk was on November 11 – 11/11, celebrated by young people in numbers-obsessed China as “singles day.” The following day, Zhou sent Liu Yan ninety-nine red roses.

Half a year after an umbrella brought them together, Zhou and Liu Yan decided they had had enough of tradition. Without telling either set of parents, Liu Yan moved in to Zhou’s apartment in the curfew-less managers’ dormitory, which had air conditioning and laundry facilities, luxuries not available in the caddies’ quarters.

The couple were now living together, but there was much they had yet to learn about each other. For example, much of Zhou’s past remained a mystery to Liu Yan. He seemed reluctant to talk about where he came from, or what he had done before he came to Dragon Lake. It seemed out of character for such a straightforward person.

“When we asked him where he was from, he seemed embarrassed,” Liu Yan said. “But we kept asking him. He just smiled and asked me to guess. So I said, ‘Hunan?’ And he said yes. But I didn’t believe him – he’s the kind of person that it’s easy to tell when he is not telling the truth.”

*

Ken Chu pushed Martin and his team hard until the very end. And he made it clear each and every day that what they were doing was “top secret.” They weren’t supposed to tell anyone what they were building. It didn’t matter that the Mission Hills website, for the better part of 2003, had proudly proclaimed that, with 180 holes, Mission Hills would soon overtake Pinehurst as the largest golf club of the world. Or that in November 2002 Mission Hills held a press conference entitled “Mission Hills Golf Club on the Road to World No. 1 – Champion Golf in China.”

Martin’s crew finished the five courses – all ninety holes – in fourteen and a half months. Faster than he ever thought possible. Not long after, Mission Hills held a lavish press conference and ceremony in which the Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed the ten-course facility the largest golf club in the world. Within months, the Chinese government would announce its ban on the construction of new golf courses.

“Those guys amaze me,” Martin said of the Chus. “Dr. Chu, he seems like he knows shit like a fortune teller.”

David Chu is said to have played an integral role in helping secure the 2008 Olympics for Beijing, and most who knew him assumed his connections within the Party were significant. One person who worked on the project said it was widely assumed the Chus were tipped off about the government’s plans for a moratorium, which led to the project’s mad dash to the finish line. “I think somebody said something to them,” said the source. “‘There’s going to be a crackdown, so if you are going to do something, do it – and do it big.’”