In addition to his construction and media projects, New Jersey businessman Walter Prochorenko has been actively working for the past seven years to introduce golf in Ukraine. Directly or as a consultant, Prochorenko, 58, has been involved in such projects as 12 Oaks at Koncha Zaspa, the Kyiv Country Club, the King's Island Golf and Tennis Club, and the Golden Gate Golf Club. In 1976, his company began to develop projects overseas, starting with military bases in Guam, Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines. Later, it subcontracted on multibillion dollar commercial projects in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Vietnam, Japan, and the UAE. The biggest, Prwhorenko says, were the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. But they also did schools, hotels, microwave towers - and, of course, golf courses. Although Prochorenko has played the game since he was in his thirties, his real lovе is the golf courses themselves: "The design aspect, the out-of-doors, putting it all together." He puts in a persuasive case for golf as a barometer of investment worthiness.

Spring is just about here, but it looks like golf will yet again have to wait another season to take hold in Ukraine. But the game that was founded by a bunch of Scots pottering around St. Andrews is more than a mere pastime today. Golf is the grease in face-to-face meetings and deal-cutting at the highest level - precisely because it allows you to quietly potter around in the fresh air rather than sitting in a stifling conference room.

More importantly, the game of golf is a high-class enterprise and it can be an important instrument for attracting investments to a country. Not only does golf generate substantial jobs - a typical club can employ between 300 and 500 people on a permanent basis - but it also provides companies that are investing with a venue for business R&R for upper and middle management. Many embassies and multinationals admit they have a hard time attracting good managers to a place that doesn't have recreational facilities - particularly golf. Golf has been cited as one of the key features missing in Ukraine by diplomats and executives from Japan, Korea, the US, the UK, Germany, and South Africa.

Take a look at the tiny Czech Republic. A few years ago, there were no golf courses, and now it's building its 28th. Slovakia will soon have six. Poland has almost two dozen courses. Even countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan already have golf courses and Russia is well on its way to having six. Hotel groups such as the Premier Palace, the Natsionalniy, the President and the Dnipro are all keen to offer their world-class clients a course near Kyiv. The Moscow Country Club has even indicated that it could send one or more planeloads of players each week to play at a course in or around Kyiv, because their season is so much shorter.

But mention "golf" at a social gathering around Kyiv, and you'll hear loud snickers of disbelief. "Not another false rumor," someone is bound to say.

A side from business considerations, a generation of young Ukrainian athletes may lose the chance to participate in the game at the next Olympics. Yet, for a country like Ukraine, golf should be a natural. Its exceptionally athletic young people would take to golf like ducks to water. This was clear when the first driving range opened in Koncha Zaspa a few years ago. Moreover, in parts of Ukraine the terrain is almost ideal.

So what's been the big hold-up in getting the first golf course going?

Investment is actually not the real problem, since there are over 25 known groups ready to invest in golf here. Even local investors have been lumping on the bandwagon.

There's the Ihor Bakai group with the Kyiv Country Club, which started out as 12 Oaks at Koncha Zaspa. This project included such big names as former Health Minister Yuriy Spizhenko, UkrSat boss Boris Nepomiashchiy, GDIP's Valeriy Yevdukimov, and former UkrNafta boss Ihor Didenko. Their project was being blueprinted by Finnish golf designer and builder, Kosti Kuronen. Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko and his son are apparently hoping to design and build a course and resort between Kyiv and Boryspil.

Real estate brokers say Dynamo Kyiv owner and SDPU(o) man Grigoriy Surkis is involved with the Ukrainian Golf Federation - an organization that has already been established, although there's no course in Ukraine! Surkis is apparently planning one within city limits, just off the Moskovskiy bridge between Obolon and Troyeshchyna.

The Pickard Group, together with HVB Credit-Anstalt, and Trans Construction AS's Olaf Skaaret from Norway, have had a project called the Kyiv First Golf & Country Club in the works for several years. The current GDIP boss, Pavlo Kryvonos, is involved.

Even Viktor Yushchenko was said to have been involved in a golf resort project near the village of Bezradychi with the Daewoo Group and California-based Cossack Investment Fund.

So the answer lies in other factors. Some projects are suffering from in-fighting between major players. Others from a lack of financing. But all are feeling the pain of red tape - and the lack of political will approve projects in Kyiv.

When you have to deal with four separate layers of approvals - local, rayon, oblast and federal - involving dozens of individual bureaucrats, in addition to no clear-cut guidelines, rules, or laws, it's easy to understand how a process that elsewhere takes a few months, can take several years here. By the time you get to a certain level of approvals, the laws change and the approvals you already have need to be re-approved. It's a killer.

Meanwhile, some 25,000 potential golf players in and around Kyiv and Ukraine are waving dubs in their sleep, ready for not just one, but several golf courses. The economics of a golf project are something to consider seriously. Former US Commercial Attache Andrew Bihun wrote about the 12 Oaks at Koncha Zaspa project that it could infuse some US $2.5mn directly into the local economy - not including construction costs or new jobs. This was in 1997 dollars. When translated into value-added jobs for the entire region, including new roads, transport, housing, communications, infrastructure, and so on, it could well create more than 1,200 jobs.

Ukraine could see as much as US $125-170mn in new investments thanks to golf. The clubs themselves would generate over 2,000 jobs directly and some 3-4,000 more indirectly. While the construction costs of some projects such as KCC, KFGCC, Boryspil and UGF are estimated to be in the US 525-35mn range, others, like GGGC, are around US $4-7mn with expected revenues of US $2-4mn after only one year. In actuality, given the lack of leisure facilities in Ukraine and the size of the market, revenues could be far higher: at the least, the country could use 10-15 courses before the first phase of saturation might be felt.

After all, when small countries like Austria can maintain over 120 courses and states like Florida over 8,000, the question of saturation becomes moot in a country' of 49mn that has yet to open its first. It's now thought that Russia can accommodate over 300 courses, although it has barely half a dozen.

If Ukraine is to attract investments and for-leign capital, its leadership should look at the idea of golf as a lure to achieve this goal. Even diehard communist regimes in China and Vietnam recognize that golf can draw capital. Vietnam, in particular, used golf clubs as a way around the US economic embargo by drawing Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Singaporean investors. They came - on condition that there be golf courses for their executives.

It's inevitable that the first golf course will be built in Ukraine. The question is, when? It would be a shame if Ukraine lost the opportunity to send Olympic hopefuls to the next Summer Games where golf will be an event - simply because on its half-million square kilometers there was not a single proper golf course!

April 2002