After taking power in 1949, Mao Zedong banned golf in China. Less than 50 years later Arnold Palmer helped to bring it back, building modern China's first course at Chung Shan Hot Spring Golf Club in Guangdong Province.

Financed by businessman Henry Fok and opened for play in 1984, the course was built by hundreds of laborers using rudimentary tools and their bare hands to fashion a championship golf course from the land. "They had no equipment—bulldozers, trucks, tractors or loaders," Palmer said later. "Imagine for a moment that this project was built by men and women using shovels and rakes, working on a task they had never undertaken before." The course was well received upon opening and continues to be a touchstone in a country that now features more than 600 golf courses, including some from the Arnold Palmer Design Company.

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