Russia as Golf’s New Frontier (WSJ)

Golf may be huge in the US and Asia, but as a lengthy Wall Street Journal explains, Russia has largely missed out on the boom as its only in recent years have a group of tycoons—including oil billionaire Roman Abramovich, aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and mining mogul Vladimir Potanin —begun bringing golf courses to the country, and in a most unusual way.

The area around Moscow—a city with one of the largest populations of billionaires—is now home to some nine 18-hole courses and at least three nine-hole courses with many of them being world-class, private and generally empty. The Russian capital, which has a population of more than 12 million, meanwhile, has only about 3,000 regular golfers, and just two publicly accessible championship pro courses. The problem? Chilly weather, deep unfamiliarity with the game, eye-watering greens fees and horrendous traffic that can make a 30-mile drive to a suburban Moscow course a three-hour affair. Moreover, it wasn’t until 1990 that the USSR opened its first real golf course, on the site of a Moscow dump.

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To read the whole article, Russia: Golf’s New Frontier?, go to the website of the Wall Street Journal.

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