Donald Trump and golf is more than a game. It is a passion." In 1999, Trump opened his first golf course: the Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach in Florida. Land for the US$45 million course was acquired through a lawsuit against Palm Beach County, Florida after Trump's purchase of the Mar-a-Lago resort. By 2007, Trump owned 4 courses around the US. Following the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Trump began purchasing existing golf courses and re-designing them. Golf courses owned by Trump hosted the LPGA Tour finale from 2001 to 2008, as well as the 2009 US Junior Amateur and US Junior Girls
Golf expansion of golf in China. The first golf course in China opened in 1984, but by the end of 2009 there were roughly 600 in the country. For much of the 21st century, development of new golf courses in China has been officially banned (with the exception of the island province of Hainan), but the number of courses had nonetheless tripled from 2004 to 2009; the "ban" has been evaded with the government's tacit approval simply by not mentioning golf in any development plans. In the United States, the number of people who play golf twenty-five times or more per