Roving correspondent Ty Webb ventures deep into the rough to seek out the latest happenings in China's booming golf industry. This month he comes across course developer T.K. Pen.

At a time when some oil-rich sheiks are star-struck enough to pay superstar Tiger Woods a reported US$25 million (€17 million) to create his initial golf course design in Dubai, it is refreshing to meet T.K. Pen, a humble man with a do-it-yourself attitude.

The Taiwanese industrialist and owner of Orient Golf, a chain of 15 clubs throughout the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, is a throwback to the days of yore when people like Scotland's Old Tom Morris designed or reshaped some of the most famous layouts in the game - Muirfield, Dornoch and Carnoustie, to name but a few - with little more than just a few horses, a plough, some local manpower and common sense.

Much like Old Tom, a four-time British Open champion prior to turning his hand to course design, the 39-year-old Pen also received a lot of the smarts he would need to create his golf empire starting from a young age. After moving to the United States at the age of 10, the young Pen could often be found behind the wheel of massive machinery moving earth at his family's coal mines in rural Kentucky and West Virginia.

That work ethic established at a young age proved evident in his academic achievements as he would go on to graduate with a double degree in computer engineering and industrial management from Pittsburgh's prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, followed by an MBA from Vanderbilt University.

Armed to the teeth with academic degrees and cash-rich from his family's main business, World TPV Technology, a publicly-listed original equipment manufacturer of computer monitors, Pen first ventured into golf when he built Orient (Linko) Golf and Country Club in his native Taiwan, with American Ronald Fream handling the design work. By the mid-1990s, he had opened his first mainland course in Xiamen, Fujian province, again with Fream handling the design. Since then, he has taken matters into his own hands, personally designing, developing and operating nine no-frills courses with another six currently in various stages of planning or in construction. Earlier this year, he sold his Orient Macau course to US gaming giant Harrah's Entertainment for an undisclosed price.

With his background in mining and engineering and an attitude that course design is not a high-tech innovation, Pen says he relies heavily on input from his team of experienced shapers and inspiration from the lay of the land to create his often spectacular designs.

Woods aside, unlike the celebrity player-designers who typically charge US$1 million and upwards for a "signature design" - most usually work with a trained landscape architect designer behind the scenes - Pen estimates that excluding the price of the land, he can create a course for a minimum of US$1.3 million, and US$4 million at the high end.

Pen's method of obtaining land is also ingenious: He usually only builds in up-and-coming cities on property that is of no use to real estate developers. Traditionally, he goes to a city and tries to identify land that is spent industrial property, old landfills or swamp within close proximity to the central business district. As local government officials realise having a golf course is a sign of a prosperous city, Pen has been offered numerous adventurous properties at bargain prices, a savings he can pass on in cheaper memberships (usually about US$30,000) and inexpensive green fees.

For instance, in Beijing, his Orient Tianxing property used to be a dried-up reservoir that became an exhausted land-fill before being transformed into a green oasis. Likewise, Orient Qingdao was previously sandy terrain that had once been a wastewater treatment site. It is now a 27-hole layout, including a nine-hole public course.

In contrast, Orient Wenzhou Yangyi in Zhejiang province is a mountaintop layout where extensive earth-moving has been done to spectacular effect. It is easily among the best that China has to offer and only RMB460 (US$62) a round each Thursday during the club's open golf day, cart and caddie included. Deals like this won't be available in Dubai.