Yet another spectacular scenic golf course has greeted us on Jeju Island. Lake Hills is a hilly flowing course, more of a links style. Again I am faced with the challenge of developing a game plan to weigh up risk/reward off the tee.
The greens are severely undulating, tricky hitting into from the typical unmowned fairways. You need good touch to score well on these greens this week.
Missed out. Not a good day in the end. Turned up with my caddy Richard Talsma to find out he was not allowed to caddy and I was forced to pay for and use the house caddy for our group. It started raining on the third hole while I was about 100m away from the buggy, my clubs got wet on the back of the buggy and the caddy had left my towel in the rain……. meanwhile Richard is standing down near the green getting shelter under a tree, just watching.
The KPGA recently informed us that the KGA (Korean Golf Association), which run the Korean Open, have allowed the international players to compete in the Korean Open pre-qualifier. This is good news for us as it is the biggest event in Korea.
So I will be attending the pre-qualifier which takes place on Aug 27.
For the Apple City Open a few weeks ago on the Korean tour we were in, Yantai, China. Not the nicest place in China. Renovations probably make the Hotel look worse than it is:
Now, the fun part and the reason this post exists. I know Chinese speak Chinese, not English. But this effort at writing English is Gold. The hotel outlines some rules and advice by putting together a “Notice to the Guests” . Gee, the Chinese can sure be brutally honest. No beating around the bush in this document. Also, if you don’t know what a “perfect instrument” or “toilet soup” is, you won’t find out here…… THIS IS A MUST SEE!
Reading this was the only thing I found entertaining in Yantai…… appart from the plastic BB guns. They were pretty fun.
The Lake Hills Jeju Open has had a date change. The event, which was just announced last week, is now to be held Aug 30 – Sep 2. This is great as it tightens up the Korean Tour schedule, meaning I can spend another week in the US doing something usefull…. as long as I can change my flight again 😀 So woopee!
The Korean Tour has changed it’s schedule again. On a good note, one of the cancelled events has been replaced with the LakeHills Jeju Open starting Aug 23, with a prize purse of US$300,000. This will cut two weeks off my US trip. My priority lies in playing in Korea to develop my game.
75 today, +4. As a result I will miss the cut by a couple.
I hit the ball well this week but my putting was terrible. That’s the simple difference.
73 today, +2.
Get a load of this. This course is the definition of narrow fairways (please excuse the high res pictures. I will try to compress later):
I kid you not, every hole is similar to this. Why you design fairways like this is beyond me. It is some of the worst course design I have ever seen. Defeats the purpose of positional play. Explain to me how the driving area for the driver is narrower than the landing area for wedge approach shots…..
But no complaints from me. Looks like everyone will be playing from the rough this week 🙂 There are birdies to be had here. Maybe not on the 484m par 4 5th, which forces me not to hit driver as shown below, but they are there:
The dreaded split fairway also appears a few times at Apple City:
The greens have a nice surface, medium softness with simple contouring. The rough is a thinner wispier leaf so some spin can be applied to the ball. It is unfortunate the fairways are this narrow because this is the first course we have played that has mown fairways. They are beautiful.
Because of the fairway designs this course is a bombers course. Overall this is a course that I like very much from the point of view of how it suits my game.
The Korean Tour bandwagon arrived in Yantai, China, late yesterday after a short 1 hour flight from Incheon Airport, Seoul. A 1 hour bus ride and everyone was at their respective motels.
The Yantai area we are in is not the nicest. Third world if you will, nowhere near a major city. Not the sort of streets you want to go for a walk down either.
The hotel smells and every shop nearby is Chinese. So it’s the motel and golf club.
Why are we in China for a Korean Tour event?
…. here’s the catch that ties everything together. Apple City is a brand new course that is owned by Koreans. The golf complex is being setup for golfing getaways for Korean. Cheap land, cheap labor and only a one hour flight from Incheon Airport in Seoul.
