Most people reading this have probably never heard of Whistling Rock Country Club.
Before the 2015 Presidents Cup, I was definitely one of them, as I could not name a single golf course in South Korea. But I saw the look in D.J. Piehowski’s eyes when he reported back about his experience at this club about an hour and a half east of Seoul. I knew that I had to try to see it for myself.
“It was without a doubt the coolest, weirdest golf experience I’ve ever had,” he said. “The service felt way too good to be true. Like, you couldn’t shake the feeling the entire day that they were confusing us with someone far more important.”
When the opportunity to come over and cover the inaugural CJ Cup at Nine Bridges came up, I immediately began trying to find a way to visit this remote destination.
We spend a lot of time in this space trying to help you plan your golf trips. This is not going to be one of those reviews. Golf is booming in South Korea, but golf tourism is not very well established. Most of the top Korean courses are (extremely) private, extravagant, and incredibly expensive. Many courses even pride themselves on their exclusivity, and wear the title as a badge of honor. Whistling Rock is a member’s club and unless your rolodex is stacked full of Korean golf contacts, it’s unlikely that the opportunity to play it will present itself. But through video, pictures, and my best attempt at words, I’ll try to bring to life one of the most unique golf experiences I’ve ever had.
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The Korean golf experience is one of formality and hospitality. I had not experienced anything remotely resembling the level of hospitality afforded by these clubs, Whistling Rock in particular. It was beyond anything I’d seen prior, or have seen since.
To help illustrate the bizarre conundrum that is my life, I was picked up by an employee of the club from my $19-a-night Airbnb in Seoul at 7 AM and driven through rural Korea to one of the most extravagant places imaginable. I was dressed in the nicest clothes I brought to Asia – khaki pants and my go-to Holderness & Bourne sweater. I already knew that I was going to be underdressed upon arrival and had no choice but to power through feeling like a fish-out-of-water.
The drive from Seoul was spectacular. The highway carved through mountains and rolling, verdant valleys with the first hues of autumn in the leaves. The journey was a stark contrast to the modernity and sprawl of nearby Seoul.
Climbing the last hill to the parking lot, our car was greeted by an uncomfortably large cadre of people waiting for my arrival. To an American guest, this kind of treatment creates anxiety. But I’m assured by Tony, the driver (and the assistant to David Fisher, the club’s VP of International Business and my host for the day), that this sort of treatment is normal in Korea. And while I’ve played my fair share of country club golf, I’m more of a change-shoes-in-the-parking-lot kinda guy. My mind was racing. They do this for everybody!?!
I dropped my belongings in the locker room, and proceeded upstairs via elevator (lol) for breakfast. I passed a few of the 30,000 bottles of wine stored in-house and sat down with David for eggs and coffee. The clubhouse is described as “a floating beacon above the golf course,” and the views from the upper level immediately provided an appreciation for the scale of the landscape. After that first look at the course I couldn’t make it out to the first tee soon enough. Patience. In Korea, there is much more to the golf experience than time actually spent on course.
We wrapped breakfast, and after a quick change of clothes, strolled out of the enormous glass doors to the patio to meet our caddie. At the handful of Korean clubs I’ve been to, the caddies are all female. There’s one cart per group, capable of accommodating an entire foursome. The ladies are extremely professional, knowledgeable, and approximately eight steps ahead of you the entire day. The carts themselves are capable of driving along the cart paths on their own, controlled by a remote on the caddie’s waist. The first time you see the cart moving on its own, you’re tempted to run it down on foot thinking that it’s a runaway. While you do have the cart to ride between holes from time to time, you typically walk down the fairway from shot to shot, which makes for a drastically different experience than a normal round in a cart. The caddie then waits for you in the fairway with your yardage and an array of clubs to choose from, and the social aspect of the walking portion of the round is effectively preserved.
The Golf Course
Building this golf course was an enormous project, as three quarters of a million cubic meters of rock were blasted to route the three nines. This task was assigned to Ted Robinson, Jr. and his team. While on this site we typically appreciate the art of minimalism when it comes to golf courses, Whistling Rock is the antithesis of minimalism.
“The Doak Scale” is the famous grading system used by architect Tom Doak to evaluate golf courses. His five volume set of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses goes through golf courses from around the world and rates them on a scale of 0-10. The description for a “0” is as follows:
“A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, which I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that wasted ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn’t have been built in the first place.”
Any time you hear about exorbitant amounts of money being spent on a golf course, your mind automatically turns to the word contrived. Often times when that much dirt is moved, the feeling of artificiality can’t be shaken. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t the case at Whistling Rock. The rock formations, the lakes, and the waterfalls were all subtle and didn’t appear man-made at first (or even second) glance. The fact that so much land can be moved and go unrecognized to the naked (albeit unprofessional) eye is remarkable, and I gathered an even greater appreciation for what had been accomplished here. Add to that the scale of the property and it’s truly remarkable what the developers were able to accomplish. The blend of nature, solitude, and peacefulness was seamless.
In communicating with David after the round, he mentioned he’d like me to compare Whistling Rock to another course I would be playing later on in the trip: South Cape. He said he’d be curious to hear what I thought were the good and the great holes from each course. I was happy to oblige, but found the task much more difficult than I had imagined. I walked away from Whistling Rock absolutely blown away by the experience, but simultaneously shocked that I had trouble listing off truly great golf holes in retrospect. And I don’t mean that in a critical way. The sum of all of the parts, the unique landscape, fall foliage, and the serenity of the walk really struck a chord with me in a way that I struggle to describe succinctly. A hole by hole description of Whistling Rock just doesn’t capture the essence or experience of the property, so I’ll be a bit brief in this next section.
There are 27 holes at Whistling Rock. We went through the nines in the standard order of Cocoon-Temple-Cloud.
Cocoon 9
Cocoon sits on the lowest part of the property. As the name suggests, a metamorphosis occurs and the routing transforms as it approaches higher elevations (the Koreans are not short on metaphors when it comes to golf).
All three nines start with a relaxed, shortish par-4. The first on the Cocoon 9 is about 340 yards, and the tee shot is played out toward an iconic mountain backdrop. A wedge from there brings you to the putting surface, where you immediately get an appreciation for the challenge you’ll be facing. The green contours are fantastic (more on this in a minute).
The 2nd hole is a thrilling risk/reward par-5, and the first of three straight half-par holes (and probably my favorite of the 27). This one is 570 yards from the back tees, with a tee shot playing relatively straight forward. A solid drive left me about 280 in, with this view over the water:
The green appears to be sitting on a cliff edge, and there’s nowhere to miss. It’s a true risk/reward shot, and a big ego test right off the bat (you already know what I chose). A pure 3-wood left me in the small slit of fairway just in front of the green. It’s a gripping and challenging approach that remains one of my most enduring memories of the day.
The second is truly a scene setter:
After two easier holes to start, the Cocoon 9 gets rude. The 3rd is a long uphill par-4 that took a solid drive and a 4-iron to reach. This is also the first of the renovated putting surfaces that are described in a bit. This hole is shown below from behind the green: