Players: John, Jin, Stephen
Tee Time: 8:03am
This was my first time playing 88c and it was ok.
Why just ok? Well, the clubhouse is a little run down and old. At least they seemed to have renovated the bathrooms so was nice. I think they also renovated the locker room so that was ok but just the overall feel and ambience was a bit worn down.
The restaurant is upstairs and while the food was ok, just the overall ambience upstairs was worn as well. Service was typical for a golf course and was ok but not great.
Stephen is my best friend from business school and was in town for a few days to hang out, see the sights, and play some golf! This was his first time playing in Korea so he was excited to get the whole experience of playing golf in Korea, caddies, clubhouse, shadow house between the front and back 9, etc.!
The course itself is fine with mostly wide fairways so not too much difficulty. There are a few blind holes. Overall, I felt that the course was pretty long. I’m not the longest hitter around but I have been hitting much longer in recent weeks and even on a good drive I would find myself having to hit hybrid for my second shot many times, etc. (on a par 4). So I was not really able to get on regulation on most holes and was mostly getting GIR + 1 and then 2 putting for bogey. I was playing pretty solid golf all day so I was happy but my score was pretty much stuck at bogey golf.
On the positive side, I did get one birdie. It was on our back 9 (which was the front 9 for the east course since we played back first…sorry if this is confusing) and I really blasted my driver straight. It was the perfect drive and probably one of the best drives of my life. Good thing I followed it up with a pretty good iron going uphill onto the green. I nailed a nice putt (not a gimme but not far either) that I should have made for birdie!
The caddie was ok. She started out a little rough because the course was backed up for the first 3 holes or so so she didn’t let us take many mulligans, etc. but after that, the course opened up a little bit, she realized that we play pretty fast, so she was cool with letting us take mulligans, etc. as needed.
Although there are many other courses in Korea that I prefer over 88cc, this isn’t a bad option for weekday golf. It’s not too expensive and it’s relatively close to Seoul in the same neighborhood at Hansung, etc.
After the round we had pretty good and cheap Korean food about 10 minutes away at 화덕위에 고등어…it was only 16k per person for a full meal with unlimited banchan, ice cream, soda, etc.!