Tee Time: 6:34am
Players: YJ, Heesun, Jy
What a great country club! This was my first time playing “The Suwon” and it was great! This is an old private country club with a long history but the clubhouse was very high end and modern so obviously they renovated it or built a new one in recent years.
There are 2 courses: Old Course and New Course. I don’t know which is considered the “better” course but I would guess that it’s the old course. The new course had some work being done so there was a notice about some temporary changes to a couple of the holes. I didn’t really pay much attention since I was playing old course anyway.
The tee times are spaced closely together though so you do play right up against the team in front of you and the team behind you is pretty close behind as well. I play fast so my groups tend to be the ones that play right up against the team in front of us. We were waiting at all of the par 3s and waiting just a little bit on the other holes so the wait wasn’t bad but definitely wasn’t a high end experience where the tee times are spaced further apart so you don’t even see the other teams.
There is a nice pro shop to the left near the men’s locker room. I didn’t go in but it looked like a good selection of hats and clothing and gift boxes, etc.
The course itself was excellent. We started with the back 9 and the first couple of holes had us tee off from above looking down at the fairway which is nice. Of course there were some holes later on where we were hitting uphill too though. The fairways were maintained well. The grass was Korean grass.
The greens were in terrible shape though. This is fairly typical in Korea these days because this summer was especially hot with major heat waves and record setting temperatures. So the greens at most golf courses really took a beating.
I hope to go back sometime. The country club is not far from Seoul and is really on par with the top courses in Korea. The only downside was the wait (we also waited around 30 minutes at the turn) but it wasn’t too bad.
