Only one 18-hole course remains, the Varadero Golf Club in this beach resort 85 miles east of Havana. Earlier this year it hosted two one-day pro-am tournaments featuring half a dozen Cuban golfers paired with wealthy foreigners.

Organizers say the events are small steps in a campaign to bring golf back to Cuba, a country that is both the best and worst imaginable place to play.

The Tourism Ministry says it would like to build 10 new courses around the country and attract high-rollers. Investors in Europe and Canada have long clamored to build courses, presenting plans that include luxury hotels, apartments and health spas. But those proposals have remained stalled for years.

Gilberto Avila, a Tourism Ministry communications officer, said Cuba solicited foreign companies for proposals to build 10 golf courses, and had received at least 11 such proposals since 2007 -- though he offered no explanation on why none has moved forward.

Golf could bring tourists ready to spend regardless of how dire the world economy looks.

"You've got a cigar and you are playing golf with the beach right there," said Jose Tovar, general manager of the Varadero Golf Club.

There were about a dozen topflight Cuban courses before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Just one golf course survived in the capital, the nine-hole Havana Golf Club. The course was spared mostly so foreign diplomats could play, said Johan Vega, the local pro. Sticks and tree branches are used as flag poles on some holes.

Things are far less bleak at Varadero, the only golf course built since the Cuban revolution. It opened in 1999, after more than five years of construction and with the Cuban government financing all of its $20 million budget, said Tovar, the general manager.

Varadero hosted qualifying tournaments for the European Tour in 1999 and 2000, but since has been unable to afford to stage more, and efforts to promote golf languished until pro-am tournaments this year and last.