The development of golf in China has been nothing short of amazing.

The country only opened its first course - the Chung Shan Hot Springs Golf Club some 80 km across the Pearl River Estuary from Hong Kong - in 1984.

Twenty-five years later and, by some estimates, it now has around 500 courses and the world's top players see huge growth to come.

Woods said that Chinese sportsmen had excelled at most sports that had government backing, and once that came for golf there would be no limits.

"If you look at countries like Sweden, where the government got behind kids' programs and funded them and let them travel into Italy and Spain, just look at how many Swedish golfers they produced," he said yesterday.

"China has done the same thing in pretty much every other sport, except for golf.

"It will be interesting to see what happens if they make a push towards that, and if they do then there's no question they will become a powerhouse in golf," due to the size of the population and the number of courses being built.

"The game is exploding over here and it's just a matter of time."

Golf's inclusion in the 2016 Olympics would also help, added Woods, who tees off on the HSBC Champions here today.

The event has been upgraded to become an elite World Golf Championship tournament and world number two Mickelson said it reflected how far China had come in such a short time.

"It gives us the strongest possible field in our fastest growing and potentially largest market," he said.

"With golf becoming an Olympic sport, with China's commitment to the Olympics and golf, I believe the exposure of the world's best players in Shanghai will drive the game of golf in China and in Asia."

The tournament, and Chinese golf, received a boost when Cui Dalin, the deputy director of China's General Administration of Sport and vice president of the Chinese Olympic Committee, took part in a news conference on Tuesday.

He is the most senior politician to publicly support golf.

Zhang Xiaoning, general secretary of the China Golf Association, called 2009 a momentous year for the sport in China.