Turkmenistan’s dictatorial president has already turned his hand to DJing, weights training, writing books and equestrianism, and can now add top-level golfing ability to his enviable skills – at least according to state television.

Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, subject of one of the world’s most bloated personality cults, engaged the golfing legend Jack Nicklaus to build a golf course outside the capital city, Ashgabat.

In footage aired on the state TV channel Altyn Asyr and published by Radio Liberty, a voiceover claimed that at the opening of the course last week, “our nation’s leader hit the hole from 75 metres [246ft]”, despite windy conditions.

There was little video evidence to back up the hole-in-one claim, other than footage of a weak and seemingly wayward drive from Berdymukhamedov. The camera panned conveniently away from the ball to the president grinning and lapping up the applause from an assembled crowd of diplomats and civil servants. Nicklaus was on hand to congratulate the president personally.

Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov unveils his golf course in Turkmenistan.

The US golfer, whose company Nicklaus Design has created hundreds of golf courses around the world, has taken a particularly hands-on approach to his Turkmen commission. The retired golfer has had a number of personal meetings with Berdymukhamedov in recent months, and a visit in April was reportedly his sixth trip to the country in quick succession. At a meeting last October, local media reported that Nicklaus told the president he had taken into account “earlier remarks and recommendations of the leader of the nation”.

Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist who has been president since 2006, has been accused of widespread human rights abuses, and Turkmenistan is one of the most closed countries in the world. A gold statue of Berdymukhamedov atop a horse stands in the capital.

The government has spent billions on vanity projects, funded by revenues from vast gas reserves. Falling gas prices in the past three years have meant much less money to go around, but as the country slips into economic crisis, the president’s pet projects continue to be funded. A reported $5bn (£3.74bn) was spent on hosting the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in September, though the country then refused to let most international media, including the Guardian, into the country to cover the event.



But Berdymukhamedov’s latest passion is golf. “I don’t really know why the president wanted golf,” Nicklaus told a golfing website last December, admitting that beyond 2,500 expats in Ashgabat, there is little appetite for the sport in the country.

At the time, Nicklaus said he would be building courses in other parts of Turkmenistan too, after Berdymukhamedov told him: “I want all my provinces to benefit.”

A spokesperson for Nicklaus Design did not respond to repeated enquiries from the Guardian about how much money Turkmenistan has paid for the golf courses, whether plans for more will be implemented, and whether the president did indeed make a hole in one from 75 metres.

Earlier this year, a government-backed newspaper in Turkmenistan reported that Donald Trump had sent Berdymukhamedov a congratulatory message referencing Nicklaus, who is a known supporter of the US president.

“My friend Jack Nicklaus, who recently returned after his visit to Ashgabat, told me a lot about the beauty of Turkmenistan and the warm hospitality of the Turkmen people,” the newspaper quoted Trump as telling Berdymukhamedov.

Berdymukhamedov’s feat is modest compared to North Korea’s Kim Jong-il. The former North Korean dictator shot an incredible 38-under-par round at the opening of Pyongyang’s first golf course. And that record round included at least five holes-in-one, as witnessed by the supreme leader’s bodyguards.