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BEIJING, Aug 18: Chinese golfing prodigy Liu Siyan talks as straight as the balls he sends flying to the back of the practice fairway.

''I like golf because I'm good at it,'' the 11-year-old national champion in his age-group said after teeing off a hundred-odd times at the driving range in Beijing's Chaoyang Kosaido Golf Club.

''If you play well, you want to come back. If you don't, you want to come back to improve.'' It is an attitude pleasing to Liu's coach and to Shenghua Universal Golf Advisors (SGA), a Chinese company earning a growing share of its income teaching the children of China's nouveau riche.

''We have had 50 per cent growth year on year in students since we started three years ago,'' said SGA general manager Lu Ming.

SGA is one of several clinics in Beijing offering weekend classes and summer-holiday golf camps aimed at getting Chinese hooked on the sport while young.

Like green fees at the golf courses mushrooming on Beijing's periphery, tuition is pricey. At around 10,000 yuan ($1,250), a three-month training package costs more than many Beijingers earn in a year.

Growing numbers of parents, however, regarded proficiency with a putter as an important investment in their child's career, said Australian Garth Cusick, SGA's head coach.

''It's all about business,'' said Cusick, one of four Australian PGA-accredited coaches at SGA.

''Parents think that, with some skills with golf balls, their children will be able to meet people in the corporate world they wouldn't normally when entering the workforce.''

HIGH FLYERS

With golf hugely popular among China's burgeoning entrepreneurial class, it was inevitable that more business decisions would be made on the putting green, said Li. ''You look at what has happened in other parts of Asia and the world. The clever ones know it will also happen here.'' Moulding today's children into tomorrow's corporate high flyers was one thing. Turning talent into trophies was another altogether, Cusick conceded.

Golf was dismissed as a decadent Western pastime under Mao Zedong's rule. Now, China is hosting six tournaments on the 2006 PGA European tour and has a raft of sponsors queuing up to be associated with the game.

None of the country's players, however, has challenged on the international stage.

Since Zhang Lianwei, China's most celebrated golfer, became the country's first to play the US Masters in 2004, few tour event leaderboards have featured Chinese names.

Despite stacking the field, local players reaped less than one per cent of total prize money offered at the mainland's stops on the 2006 European PGA tour. Of 22 Chinese competing in April's China Open, only one made the cut.

Although China has challenged Scotland's claim to have invented the game, its modern golfing history is short. The sport was banned for decades after China's Communist Party swept to power in 1949 and China opened its first course in 1984.

GOOD COACHES

The game needed time to develop but a dearth of professional coaches and a traditional emphasis on learning by rote had not helped China's hopes of producing a champion, Cusick said.

''The countries that dominate the world have the best coaches.

That is a fact... Good golfers come from good coaches and from solid junior development programmes.

''How Chinese learn at school, by constant repetition, is not how you play golf. Golf's not about going through a checklist.

That learning style needs to be altered.'' For many Beijing parents, however, the most important learning is in the language and etiquette.

Apart from the benefit of hearing an Australian explain the benefits of a five-wood over a three-iron from a particular lie -- albeit with translator -- many parents believe that exposing their children to golf's strict rules will make them more well-rounded individuals, said Li Ming.

''A lot of parents with money want their kids to have the best things in life. They see golf as a refined sport -- a sport that demands etiquette and a strict adherence to rules. This could help them later in life.'' Liu Siyan, who names Tiger Woods as his hero, could not agree more.

''The kids that play golf are quite well-behaved,'' he said.

''It's a very high-class sport where only people with money can afford to play it. I think rich people must be more educated. If they're educated, they should have better etiquette.''

REUTERS