WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

DLF Golf & Country Club, New Delhi, India

(NEW DELHI, INDIA) -- Despite an overheated commercial and residential real estate market, savvy developers in India have discovered championship-designed golf courses can become a new revenue avenue that help sell their multi-million-dollar projects.

The New Delhi GlobalPost reports going green is the new name of the game among India developers.

"Over the past five years, new courses have mushroomed all over the country, and golf-related retailers and manufacturers are beginning to set up shop here to exploit a potentially vast future market," the GlobalPost reports.

"Aided by corporate support and a rising middle class, golf is fast becoming big business in India," the newspaper states. "India's skyrocketing residential real estate market has played a big part in the boom."

Marcel Siem

The number of amateur tournaments and the prize money for winning has increased while a number of professional events are also springing up -- 24 pro tournaments alone in 2010.

Golf tourism is emerging as a lucrative travel business, as players from Japan and Southeast Asia fly in on charter weekends to take advantage of India's bargain basement greens fees. Germany's top golfer Marcel Siem plays in tourneys here.

"We are just short of 200 courses, and we expect that we will put up in the next decade more than 100 courses," said Ashit Luthra, chairman of the Indian Golf Union. "It is becoming a corporate sport."

Under way this week at the Indian capital's new DLF Golf & Country Club, a plush course built by one of the country's largest real estate developers, the Avantha Masters is the highest paying professional tournament ever played in India, offering prize money of $2 million, according to the GlobalPost.

Arnold Palmer

Designed by Orlando, FL-based Arnold Palmer, the DLF Golf & Country Club opened for play in 1999, at the beginning of a decade-long burst of activity on the Indian golf scene.

Located in Gurgaon, Haryana, a satellite city close to New Delhi that plays host to a large number of multinationals, the golf club was built to attract wealthy Delhi residents to the city's hinterland.

"Now virtually every major real estate developer in India is turning to golf as a way of marketing their properties to an elite that once valued an address in the urban center above all," according to the GlobalPost.

Graham Cooke

Jaypee Greens, for instance, focused its recently completed 452-acre development in Greater Noida, the latest of Delhi's increasingly far-flung suburbs, on an 18-hole course designed by Canada's Graham Cooke.

For an encore, the company is building a top-end residential project around a 2500-acre "sports city" that will feature golf courses as well as a motor-racing track and other facilities.

According to the company, golf helps it attract elite customers and sell its properties for more than double the price of neighboring residential projects, the newspaper reports.

"Golf is actually a major driver for our business," says Manu Goswami, head of business development at real estate developer Jaypee Greens. "It's pretty amazing the number of people who are getting into it."

Retailers are also beginning to see India's potential.

This January, Callaway Golf, the billion dollar company known for creating the "Big Bertha" driver, launched a wholly owned subsidiary to tap the local Indian market and penned a marketing deal with Jeev Mikkha Singh, the top-ranked Indian player in the world.

The launch follows the entry of TaylorMade Golf, a division of Adidas, in 2003.

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