Tee Time: 8:06
Players: Jy
Sagewood Hongcheon is probably my favorite public course in Korea. It’s expensive though (400k on Sat morning, 350k on Sat afternoon / all day Sundays / public holidays) so it’s a good 70-120k or so more expensive than a typical Korean golf course.
It’s also kind of far. It’s about an hour and 20 minutes from Seoul.
So as a result, tee times are generally easier to get at Sagewood when compared to other golf courses in Korea. Whenever I need a last minute emergency booking, Sagewood usually comes to my rescue.
And the summer is kind of a low season for golf in Korea since it’s hot. As a result, they have a special promotion this summer where they are allowing 2 player golf! You still pay for the full cost of a cart though. And with the shortage of caddies in Korea, Sagewood has the option for no-caddie golf and you can play no-caddie golf alongside your 2 player golf!
In most countries this probably wouldn’t be a big deal but in Korea, it’s really rare to find a golf course that allows twosomes!
Twosomes + no caddie is great for many reasons (although some of these reasons might be annoying for some people). Since most of the other groups are foursomes, you can play slowly. You can’t play through in Korea so you need to wait for the group in front of you. As a twosome, if you play fast, you’ll be waiting a lot. In our case, this was great because it gave us ample opportunity to practice more on the course. Take a mulligan, hit multiple driver shots, etc. It is rare in Korea to get this much time out on the course so we took advantage of it. Even so, we finished the front 9 in 2 hours which isn’t bad and we were right up against the group in front of us so our pace was fine.
The course seemed pretty empty. We rarely saw anyone behind us because the group behind us was always 2-3 holes away.
And since there is no caddie, you can take as many mulligans, do-overs, etc. as you want without having to ask, etc. Of course this means that you should look out for the ball for each other because there’s no caddie that will help find your ball!
The weather was beautiful! The sun started to come out in the last few holes so it did get hot but overall with a morning tee time, it was great!
Overall, it was a great round. It was expensive though at a cost of 350k * 2 + 120k (cart) = 820k. By the time we added some food, etc. it was around 900k (roughly $750!).