A268: China Golf Research

The year 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of golf’s development in China, presenting a critical juncture for systematically reviewing the sport’s progress. To commemorate this milestone, the China Golf Association (CGA) launched the ‘40 Years of Golf in China’ initiative, which primarily solicits literary and audiovisual works for promotional purposes. However, this campaign notably lacks a comprehensive synthesis of existing academic research on the subject. To address this gap, this study employs CiteSpace-based knowledge mapping to analyze the current state and emerging trends in scholarly research on golf in China. Method: This study utilized CSSCI-indexed journal articles from the CNKI database (2000–2023) with ‘golf’ as the search term. Employing bibliometric methods and CiteSpace 6.3 visualization software, it systematically analyzed the basic features of the distribution of articles, such as publication trends, core authors, and institutional collaboration networks etc. Techniques such as keyword co-occurrence and burst detection were applied to identify research hot spots and future directions. (1) Golf research in China (2000–2023) followed an inverted V-shaped trajectory. Four phases were identified: initial stage (2000–2004), growth stage (2005–2013), decline stage (2014–2018), and stabilization stage (2019–2023). (2) Price’s Law identified 13 core authors (N ≥ 2). Research institutions were dominated by sports-focused universities and institutes. (3) Keyword analysis revealed three key patterns: Strong project-centric focus. High attention to ‘sports management’ and ‘talent cultivation’. Comprehensive coverage across four domains: school sports, mass sports, competitive sports, and the sports industry. The emergent keyword ‘shotting effect’ (until 2023) suggests sports training may become a future priority. Current research on golf in China remains fragmented and insular, peaking in 2010–2014 with symmetrical trends before and after, with limited high-quality outputs. Author collaborations were sparse, with predominantly independent studies. Collaborative studies are notably lacking, and no stable academic network has yet formed. Future efforts should prioritize in-depth research on sports training to enhance technical proficiency in golf, thereby supporting its widespread adoption and high-quality development in China. Such advancements would contribute to the national ‘Healthy China’ initiative.