Tee Time: 4pm
Players: Youngsin, Jy
What an awesome round! I love this place!
Osan Air Base is a US military base (US Air Force) in Korea located around an hour or so south of Seoul. Since it’s an air base, there are many large hangars, etc. Usually if the US President flies to Korea for a visit, they fly into Osan Air Base.
To gain access to the base, you need to have base access as part of the US military stationed in Korea or work on base as a contractor, or have a job that includes base access. I have none of those but my friends is a teacher at the school on base so she was able to sign me on.
To sign onto base, there is a visitor center near the entrance. There are also 2 parking lots near the entrance. One lot is a little further from the visitor center and looks like it is used for more long term parking (e.g., if you drive there and then consolidate into a single car to get onto base). The lot close to the visitor center is probably to just park while you take care of visitor access, etc.
Anyway, once you have access to the base you can drive over to the golf course! The golf course is at the other end of the base so it’s a little far but the base isn’t very big so I would guess that it’s maybe a 10 minute drive at most.
One at the golf course, there is a small parking lot. There are a few spots really close but those are reserved for officers, etc. There is a small restaurants, lots of tables outside (shaded) and the pro shop where you go in to check in, pay, etc. The pro shop is pretty typical and sell stuff like golf balls, clothing, shoes, etc. There are also some custom products for this golf course so maybe I’ll pick up some of that stuff next time!
To make a tee time reservation, there is a priority order. I believe enlisted military have priority and then it goes from there. I don’t know the exact priority but korean contractors on base really like to play golf, etc. As a teacher, my friend said that it is pretty much impossible for her to make a tee time reservation on a weekend and even weekdays are tough. But the good news is that if you go to 3pm, it’s first come first serve and you pay a twilight rate. The twilight rate is basically the 9 hole rate but you can play more holes if the sun is out.
For pricing, there is a long list and for 18 holes it ranges from around $16 to $80. As a guest, my green fee is the max $80 regardless of whether you are a US citizen, Korean citizen, etc.
We played twilight though. We got there at around 3:30 and they were able to get us on at around 4pm. Cost was $48 for the green fee and $9 for cart per person. So for the 2 of us, we paid $114 which wasn’t too bad.
The course itself is very nice. It is well kept and there are many trees. Carts can be driven cart path only. If you are a wounded military / veteran you can drive the cart on the course and there is a special flag which denotes this.
They are doing some type of course maintenance so holes 8 and 9 were both converted temporarily to par 3s. So it seemed like out of the first 9 holes, 4 of them were par 3s which was a little bit of a bummer. But we were able to fit in 14 holes today so that was pretty nice. We probably could have played one more (the 18th) but ended up just calling it a night.
We had a quick bite afterwards at Chili’s on base which was nice. Unlike the local Korean restaurants, you do need to tip here, etc.
