In Hong Kong’s concrete jungle, niche pursuits like golf and cricket cling to precious scraps of green space. Now, with the 69th Festival of Sport (FOS) pushing to democratise these sports and bring them into the community spotlight, the question remains: will these government initiatives spark lasting participation or fleeting interest?
Mr Keung wipes sweat from his brow under the Tuen Mun Golf Centre’s unforgiving April sun, his two young daughters giggling nearby as they grip oversized putters for the first time. “Sometimes when I go golfing, my daughters say they want to tag along, but I can’t take care of them when I am out on the course,” says the 38-year-old construction worker, who stumbled upon the Golf Fun Day banner by chance while driving past.
The Golf Fun Day, part of the 69th FOS co-organised by the Golf Association of Hong Kong, China (GAHKC) and the Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China (SF&OC), drew families like Keung’s on 18 April 2026.
“It’s my first time here in the Tuen Mun driving range, it’s a nice opportunity for people because it’s free and golf is usually inaccessible,” said Keung who is a frequent golfer lately, playing three times a week. “I usually go to the Sai Sha Golf Range, South China Athletic Association, or just the Mainland because clubs there allow non-members to play.”
But Keung’s resourceful routine of shuffling between Sai Sha, private clubs, and cross-border courses is a clear reflection of a stark reality: public golfing facilities in one of the world’s densest cities are rare. Hong Kong has just a handful of publicly accessible driving ranges – Tuen Mun, the city’s only government-run range, while private clubs with years-long waiting lists and six-figure debentures cater not to the masses. The sport’s inaccessibility, compounded by the 2023 decision to reclaim part of the Fanling public course for housing, has left casual golfers like Keung piecing together a playing schedule across borders and memberships. In a city that loves to talk about sports development, sports for all and mega events, reality is far from ambition.
“The government’s so-called efforts in promoting sports in the community is really bad,” Keung laments. “None of my friends have heard of this, even when they play golf. I came across this out of pure luck.” He said that the promotion is “basically non-existent”, and suggested that the government should’ve taken inspiration from LivGolf which had great success in promotion, for example putting up posters in MTR stations and buses, organizing collaboration events with sponsors or even just selling merchandise to catch the people’s attention.
For Keung, the Golf Fun Day offers a glimmer of hope, but systemic flaws persist. When asked about his daughters’ future on golf, he said,”I think Hong Kong does not allow you to be full time players, regardless of the sport you play, they don’t pay a good salary for being an athlete nor do they even support the athletes’ training.”
Golf’s Niche Struggle
Golf in Hong Kong sits at the edge of exclusivity, with public access limited to Tuen Mun’s driving range, a handful of simulators, and the city’s few open courses, while private clubs continue to dominate the sport’s landscape. The Golf Fun Day was designed to push against that barrier, offering beginner clinics as part of the Festival of Sport’s wider effort to bring sport closer to the community and promote “sport for all.”
Dolla Chui, GAHKC deputy general manager, has long been the driving force behind Hong Kong golf’s grassroots expansion. “As a golf association, we want to make golf more popular in Hong Kong,” she explains. “That’s why we organise events on different levels, including beginners, intermediates, and advanced players. The players we train from the very start are our future stars.”
That effort has been reinforced by the rise of mega-event momentum, including Olympian Tiffany Chan’s breakout years in 2016 and 2020, which helped draw attention to the sport and sparked M-Mark funding surges to HK$15 million for events like LIV Golf. Since 2013, GAHKC’s school programme has introduced golf to dozens of local primary schools, providing equipment, coaching and access to venues, while embedding the sport into the physical education curriculum in the hope of sparking long-term interest among younger students.
However, facilities remain a sticky point. “There are very few venues in Hong Kong for golf training,” Chui notes. “We have to liaise with different golf clubs regularly to get our players access to driving ranges and actual golf courses.” While the indoor golf training facility in the Hong Kong Sports Institute helps, golfers have to be at an actual golf course to “learn layout, course management – things you cannot simulate indoors”. With fewer than 10 driving ranges, mostly private, public access remains limited. Chui also points out that with all of the golf courses in Hong Kong being run by private clubs, “you can’t practice anytime, but only in the timeslots they give us.” This can be a serious hurdle for student golfers especially, as a normal outing can take more than four hours.
Meanwhile, at the Hong Kong Golf Club (HKGC), the city’s oldest course operator at Deep Water Bay and Fanling, Director of Communications Alex Jenkins highlights the growing potential for local golf development and broadening access beyond traditional elite circles. “Although HKGC is a private club, nearly 40% of rounds of golf are played by non-members,” he says, with the number expected to grow in the coming years.
Jenkins also points to a series of collaborative initiatives designed to bring more people into the game. “In addition to hosting our own development programmes for the local community, we run joint initiatives with the GAHKC such as the ‘Get Into Golf’ programme and the Inter-Secondary Schools Tournament,” he says.
He adds that the Hong Kong Golf Club also supports elite and junior development by opening its facilities to the national and junior teams for regular training at no charge. Taken together, these efforts are intended to turn fleeting interest into sustained participation in a sport long shaped by private membership and status-based hierarchies.
These go further than one-off fun days, with the HKGC and GAHKC running complimentary coaching clinics at the Hong Kong Open that draw over 1,000 children weekly. “Giving those youngsters who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to golf facilities will drive interest in the game locally – and it has been through previous initiatives such as this which has helped unearth golfing talents who now represent Hong Kong on the international stage,” Jenkins says, citing Club Ambassador Taichi Kho’s 2023 Asian Games gold and the men’s team silver as proof of grassroots potential.
Looking ahead, Jenkins flags infrastructure as key to turning transient event enthusiasm into sustained participation. The new driving range at Go Park in Sai Sha offers a welcome boost, while the planned Plover Cove Golf Club in Tai Po, expected to open in 2027, could further expand public options. “If this facility permits public use, then naturally this will also aid golf development,” he notes. Without such support, FOS initiatives risk shining brightly in the short term, leaving private clubs like HKGC to carry most of the burden of nurturing the next generation.
Cricket’s Fleeting Buzz?
Cricketers in Hong Kong share the same struggles of finding a place to play. Cricket Hong Kong China (CHKC) is also a part of the 69th Festival of Sports, and held a fun day “Cricket For All” on the 19th April, co-organized by the SF&OC.
12-year Hong Kong cricket veteran, Alison Siu, who first started representing Hong Kong’s women’s cricket team in the 2014 Incheon Asian Games when she was 16, now 27, recently took up another role as an assitant development manager at Cricket Hong Kong China. She sees Cricket For All as a great opportunity to take the first steps and lead the way of letting more people learn about cricket.
“First, we need to make sure everyone knows that cricket is a bat-and-ball game. It’s like when you ask people, and they ask if it’s a type of insect, which ends the conversation. That’s why we aim to first let people know about the sport,” said Siu, while introducing participants to cricket at Po Kong Village Road Reservoir Cricket Grounds.
“I say cricket is a sport suitable for everyone, regardless of your gender, body shape, or age. I have met players from 3 years old to 80+ year-olds who are still actively playing. If you would like to play, we will find a solution for you to start playing,” she added.
Cricket Hong Kong offers competitions for cricketers of all age groups, genders, and levels of play. Including the men’s Premier League, Division 1 to 3, through adults and teenager age categories, U11, U13, U15, U17, and up to U19.
Siu explained that she started early because of luck, and was in a special case of having a cricket team in primary school, because the wife of her PE teacher is a member of the Hong Kong Cricket Club (HKCC). She started playing early, since she was eight years old, and her coach referred her to train with the HKCC for her talent soon after.
She added that there were some other clubs in the city, but the major channels to play cricket were still through HKCC training. Unlike before, it’s currently much better to be in touch with cricket.
“Cricket Hong Kong provides summer courses, elementary classes for teenagers to try out the sport in spanning 9 of the 18 districts of Hong Kong. Working closely with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, we were able to focus on training younger athletes of the 6-12 age range,” she said.
“While we have adult age development classes too, like the ones at the Craigengower Cricket Club at Causeway-Bay.”
Cricket in Hong Kong is a sport mostly played by minorities and foreigners, and has had a stigma in our society. Siu said Cricket Hong Kong is trying to repaint the picture and push for further local Chinese involvement.
“Since a couple of years back, we have had the team comprised of a majority of local Chinese, named Dragons in our regular playing leagues. We also send the Dragons, both men and women teams, to the National Games at Shanghai every year,” she said.
For her short period of time working at Cricket Hong Kong, she expressed that the cooperative efforts with the LCSD led them to great feedback results in recent years.
“LCSD was very supportive, we held many events together, they even initiated and pushed us to organise more events to promote cricket in the communities. Especially them, as the government officials doing the outreach, while we are co-hosting and handling the technical and practical aspects of the events, it makes the job so much easier when we are working together.”
She added that incorporating cricket into the official Physical Education hours of the students made it accessible for everyone to try, which massively helps their efforts in promoting cricket to everyone and extending the player base.
When asked about the outlook of cricket in Hong Kong, she said that having recently acquired the M-mark for Hong Kong Sixes, setting similar goals as Rugby Sevens, and getting closer to those goals would grant them more funding.
“I hope our funding increases year by year as our scale increases and we get more exposure as a mega-event. Especially, we have worked with the Hong Kong Jockey Club in recent years, which definitely helped us massively.”
Government Support
Active participation across all age groups is a key ingredient in building a strong, sustainable sporting culture in Hong Kong. While the government has spent years trying to raise participation levels, Hong Kong still faces a challenge in getting more people active, as the graph shows that many residents do not meet the recommended levels of physical activity – though encouragingly, the percentage engaging in regular activity has grown post-COVID. The central question, then, is whether today’s sports initiatives can translate short-term engagement into long-term interest.
That long-term foundation was laid in the 2002 policy review in the report Towards a More Sporting Future, which set out a three-pronged approach: promoting “Sport for All” at the community level, supporting elite sporting excellence, and positioning Hong Kong as a hub for major international events. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) puts this into action through initiatives such as the District Sports Programmes, the Community Sports Club Project, the Hong Kong Games, and the FOS, embedding physical activity into daily life.
But most importantly, the LCSD provides the “building blocks” for sustainable participation – funding, access to venues, coaching subsidies, and event coordination – which allows them to sustain regular sport days and foster continuous engagement. In the 2024-25 year alone, the LCSD was able to run 37,500 recreation and sports activities for 2.8 million participants of all ages and abilities. Furthermore, the Hong Kong government’s financial subvention and funding goes a long way to reduce barriers to entry for participants. Their annual spending overall for sport has risen by 57% over six years to $7.9 billion, with 76% ($6 billion) of its sports development expenditure in 2024-2025 going towards community sports promotion, while over $3.6 million went to the National Sports Associations this year, showing the importance of a government body investing in grassroots sports.
Taken together, these sustained efforts can help create the conditions that make sporting interest endure. The challenge for Hong Kong now is ensuring that this momentum extends beyond these annual events like the FOS, to build visibility, credibility, and long-term buy-in for niche sports.