The China Golf Association (CGA) signed a "milestone" partnership deal with equipment makers Taylormade on Tuesday, which it hopes will help unearth a golfing Yao Ming to take the sport to a new level in the country.

Under the three-year deal, Taylormade, a subsidiary of Adidas , will provide equipment, apparel and make a "major financial investment" in supporting young Chinese golfers.

"This is a major milestone in the history of the game in this country," Cui Dalin, China's assistant minister of sport, told a news conference.

"The standard of the game has risen spectacularly in the last few years and I believe Chinese golf is ready to move to the next stage to take off."

As a non-Olympic sport, the development of the game in China is relatively under-funded and the CGA has put much stock in finding a player who would have a similar impact on golf as Houston Rockets center Yao Ming has had on basketball.

"We have been thinking about it every day," said Zhang Xiaoning, chief secretary of the CGA.

"Maybe we'll have a female Yao Ming first. I think one important factor is to select our players rigorously, have systematic, scientific training and then we'll have top notch players."

Taylormade's Dennis Allen said he thought the CGA were being optimistic about how long it would take to develop a top player, and hoped the deal would have a much wider effect.

"They say two to three years, I say five to 10," he said. "It's not a team game, it's not just physical, it's mental."

One of the major problems, Allen said, was that golf was perceived as an elitist sport -- a big handicap in a Communist country -- with only 300,000 Chinese playing once a week.

"If we were to go back 10 years, we would have done everything we could to have prevented it developing the way it did," said Allen, Taylormade's managing director for the Asia-Pacific.

"We need to get to the people of influence to prove that golf is not an evil thing ... we understand the aura around the game is not good and we want to improve it."

The cost of playing the game, currently between 800 yuan and 2,200 yuan ($103.1-$283.6) a round, compared to the disposable income of the Chinese, which even in the booming urban areas was an average of 11,759 yuan a year in 2006, is another problem.

"We can't control green fees but we can make products more affordable and more accessible," said Allen.

"As we bring costs down, we hope the prosperity of the middle classes will rise to meet it.

"This goes beyond selling, we want the game to grow."

(China Daily February 14, 2007)