Tee Time 3:34pm
Players: Jono, Marko, David
Castlex (pronounced “Castle X”) Seoul is part of the Castlex golf clubs which also includes a location on jeju island. This review is for Castlex Seoul.
Technically, this golf club is not located in Seoul. It is technically in hanam city in Gyeonggi-do. But even that is slightly misleading because it’s right alongside Wirye so most people who drive here will just assume that it’s in Wirye.
But it’s so close to Seoul, I guess I can’t blame them for putting Seoul in the name. From my house in jamsil, it was only 25 minutes to get here all on local roads so I think it is the closest golf course from my home.
I had heard of this place a few times so I was curious to see if it’s any good. It’s a private club but membership didn’t seem too crazy. If I were to become a member of private club, this seemed like it might be a decent option so I wanted to check it out.
Like most private country clubs in Korea, they give priority to members first and then the public can book any leftover tee times. Usually for a weekend, it’s fully booked but because July tends to be wet and humid because of monsoon season, there was some availability early in the morning (4am, 5am tee times!) as well as late afternoon (3:30pm, 4pm, etc.).
The drive over to the club was great. Even though I knew it was only 10km away, I was still surprised to see how close it was!
There is a practice range which seems ok but at only 150 meters or so, I probably won’t ever use it. The clubhouse has valet parking for only 5k krw which seems really cheap. They take your clubs and will load them at the end for you. There is a public parking area as well but they didn’t really seem to give me that option when I drove up to the clubhouse for them to take my clubs. The entrance area to the clubhouse was small and cramped.
The actual course…well it was a mix. Some holes really sucked and some were great! We started with the back 9 so you need to take an elevator down to hole 10. There is a small waiting area at hole 10. There is a practice green but it’s over at hole 1.
We tee’d off at hole 10. This was the worst hole at the course. There are trees blocking your view as well as impeding your ball flight. They were working on the tee box for the white tees so we hit off the blues for this hole.
After the crappy hole 10, it got better. I believe it was hole 12 or so that had a nice lake hazard and looked pretty nice. You are close to the city so you have views of the apartment buildings at Wirye as well as Lotte World Tower in the distance. You can actually see the building where I live!
There was no rest period after 9 holes so we just played through. Pace of play was rushed like most Korean courses. We finished our round before 8pm so it was about a 4:30 round which is pretty fast for Korea. We waited a little bit for the group in front of us and the group behind us was pretty close to us as well.
The course is very hilly so you’re constantly going up on a hole then down to another hole, etc.
The conclusion is that while I wanted to check out the course, I really have no desire to play here again. Despite being close to Seoul, they seem to have decent availability for the public and I can kind of see why. I’d rather just drive an extra 30 minutes and play at one of the courses in Yongin, etc.
