Greg Norman has called for golf to be included as a demonstration sport at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Norman has long been an advocate of golf taking its place at the Olympic table, but his previous campaigns for its inclusion have fallen on deaf ears.

With the Olympics heading to China, one of the most thriving golfing nations in the world, Norman insisted Beijing 2008 would be the ideal occasion for the sport to be given its chance.

Norman was speaking in Shanghai ahead of the revived BMW Asian Open at the Tomson Golf Club in Pudong.

Norman will compete in a field which includes defending champion and world number eight Padraig Harrington, who won the last Asian Open two years ago in Taiwan.

They are joined by Paul McGinley, South Korea's KJ Choi and Miguel Angel Jiminez. British Masters champion Barry Lane opted against travelling to China while John Daly preferred to remain in America to concentrate on qualifying for the Ryder Cup.

"I think golf should be in the Olympics. The way golf has grown here in China over the last four or five years, it is worthy," the two-time British Open winner continued. "It is an emerging sport here. You have 400 million youth in this country and if you can capture even a single-digit percentage of that it is going to be huge."