General Secretary, 69, (His Age, Not His Score) Plays With U.S. Pros : China’s Zhao Puts Stamp of Approval on Golf

Zhao Ziyang, general secretary of the Communist Party of China, played a round Friday with some American golf professionals.

They did not keep score. Zhao was, in effect, putting the official stamp of approval on a game that the Chinese Communists had banned as a pastime of capitalists.

Friday’s round took place at the Beijing International Golf Club--a Sino-Japanese venture near the famous Ming Tombs, an hour’s drive north of Beijing. It preceded the Beijing International Golf Friendship Tournament, a pro-celebrity event to be held today.

Zhao, 69, who took up golf about two years ago, will not play in the tournament. However, as Comrade Zhao, honorary president of the Chinese Golf Assn., he will hand out the prizes.

Defends the Game

In a brief interview after his round Friday, Zhao defended the game, which the Chinese shunned as an extravagance after the Communist takeover in 1949.

“Golf’s a good game,” he said. “You can enjoy the nice weather. It’s good exercise, you can go out walking and it’s a good way to have contact with friends.”

Golf can also be seen as having some connection with China’s reform policies and its opening to the outside world, he said, and added, “Of course, golf--this kind of activity--can increase international contacts.”

For now, there are just six golf courses in all of China.

Avoids Pond, Sand Trap

At one point Friday, Zhao looked along a 200-yard fairway, took note of a pond to the right and a sand trap to the left, and then coolly drove his ball from tee to green. One of the Americans, Morris Hatalsky, the winner of last Sunday’s Kemper Open at Potomac, Md., followed Zhao, and he did not do as well.

“When he hits the green and I miss it, he’s the pro and I’m the amateur,” Hatalsky remarked.

But there was no real doubt about which player was the amateur. A couple of holes later, Zhao, whose ball lay just off the green, badly overshot the hole.

Hatalsky offered some advice: “You’re giving it too much arm. Choke up on the club.”

Zhao took four more swings and badly overshot the hole each time.

“Just relax,” advised Larry Nelson, another American professional. “Not so hard.”

Nelson demonstrated, sinking his ball. To assure Zhao that it does not come easily, Nelson said he had practiced shots like that perhaps 20,000 times.

Richard Burress, vice president of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former aide to ex-President Gerald R. Ford, played with Zhao as Ford’s personal representative.

“It’s just an absolutely unique experience,” he said. “You would never have expected the general secretary of China to play golf. . . . I think it indicates an opening up of the whole society to new ideas.”

Steve Jones, another American professional golfer, said he hopes this event marks the beginning of real development of the game in China.

“It didn’t used to be OK,” Jones said. “It posed as a millionaire’s sport. I think it’s not. In the United States, you can play pretty cheap.”

Gamely keeping up with Zhao and Burress and the professionals was the second-ranking Chinese official present, Zheng Tuobin, the minister of foreign economic relations and trade. He hit the ball into ponds and topped them for short distances along the fairway, but he seemed to enjoy it.

Zheng was asked when he began learning to play, and he replied: “July 28, 1986.” That, he said, was the day that the club opened, and he was on hand to take part in the ceremonies.

“This golf course is a joint venture,” he said. “At first, I only wanted to support the joint venture. Then, I got interested in golf.”

At a rest stop halfway around the course, Hatalsky told Zhao that the professionals would be happy to do anything they could to promote golf here.

“Go back and invite Americans to invest in golf courses in China,” Zhao replied.