The Homecoming
A native son returns to sample the heights and delights of golf on the other side of the world
BY CHANG-RAE LEE
Golf in Korea is a pretty exalted affair, and the reasons are clear: There are an estimated 2.5 million golfers in Korea, but a mere 50 public-access courses, most of which are resort tracks where the least expensive green fee is $100, plus $60 for the mandatory caddie or cart. The other 120 golf courses in the country are private, super-exclusive clubs with mid-six figure initiation fees. So it figures that most of the nation's golfers are driving-range players--some even exclusively so--and only if you're a tycoon or a high-level employee or client of one of the huge conglomerates can you play regularly at some of the loveliest, most opulent golf clubs in Asia.
But it seemed only right to begin at the driving range. I'm with my uncle and aunt in Ilsan, a newer suburban area 15 miles northwest of Seoul. At breakfast we decide that the first day of my return to the homeland should in part be spent hitting balls. The greatest part, naturally, will be devoted to eating and communing with other relatives, but to help ease my adjustment to the local time we agree that there is nothing better for jet lag than working through a couple hundred balls. They're avid golfers, and are lucky enough to belong to one of the few non-billionaires clubs in the area. But because it's 90 minutes away, and a round takes at least six hours to play, they're lucky if they can get out once a week during the season. As such, they also have a $1,000 annual range "membership" that allows them to hit unlimited balls close to home.
The netted range, small by American standards, is a double-decker jammed among houses and shops on the outskirts of the town. It's exceedingly clean and spiffy, more like a fancy health club than your average cruddy public range with frayed mats and balls knocked clean of dimples. We have a "tee time," too, and as my aunt checks us in at the front desk the panel of lights behind the receptionist clicks on at the corresponding second-floor stalls.
Hitting balls is a nifty arrangement. You tap a small sewing machine-type pedal with your club, and a mechanical arm extends and deftly places a ball on the tee or drops it on the mat. You can also set the machine on auto-load, and I get into a fairly rapid rhythm, the meter of the ball machine and me eventually grooving into a weird kind of anapestic chant, whack-shoot-shoo, whack-shoot-shoo, and I find myself feeling oddly monk-like, even shutting my eyes for several swings. The mats are high-end, the filaments of the synthetic grass stout enough to prop the ball to a perfect lie but still supple and wispy, the rubber beneath just spongy enough to let you go at the ball without fear of damaging the shaft or your wrists. There are mini-refrigerators filled with cold, moist hand towels, and an attendant constantly sweeps the stalls and empties ashtrays and tidies the pillows of the lounge chairs and sofas arranged about the stalls.
The most disarming feature, however, isn't a detail of the facility but the patrons themselves, divided equally by gender, who to the last seem to own solid 10-handicap swings--something I'm not quite used to seeing at the local range back home, where the strokes are varied and brutal. These golfers aren't all skilled, of course, the shanks and duffs abounding, but you can easily imagine they soon will be, as many, much like the two chic 20-something women taking a lesson next to me, had clearly been instructed by a professional. The women are slickly coutured in clingy black pants and tops, funky Swedish golf shoes, their salon-perfect hair and makeup done up a la Grace Park of the LPGA. And as I eavesdrop on their conversation when the pro takes a coffee break, I'm not at all surprised to hear that they aren't gossiping about their boyfriends but rather seriously theorizing on grip pressure and weight shift and a full release, then duly demonstrating for each other how it ought to be done. They have smooth, long swings, and hit it far. People take golf seriously here, even if they'll never hit into anything but a net. Perhaps if I lived here, too, I'd be content with just visiting the range, given how darn nice it is, and then because I always depart a session having played an immensely satisfying and easeful round of perfect-lie, bogey-free golf, this the native ground of my scratch-golfer self, forever uncowed, risk-loving, brilliantly bending the ball left and right.
But then I would have missed perhaps the most pleasurable, luxurious golf I will ever experience, my excruciatingly real and unsteady play notwithstanding. Several days later my contact in Seoul, Seon-Keun (S.K.) Lee, Editor-in-Chief of Golf Digest Korea, and the magazine's president pick me up at dawn for the drive to our first course. My hosts are wearing business suits, and I'm thankful to be dressed similarly, as I've been advised by knowledgeable friends that in Korea it's poor form to show up at the club in your playing clothes, even if it's a certainty you won't make it to the office that day, even if it's a weekend. I like the idea of dressing up for golf, partly because I rarely dress up for anything, partly because there's always a tangle of guilt in my gut when I head off to play (all that time, all that money), a stubborn knot which the rigor of my suit jacket and stiff wingtips quickly splices, as I can pretend I'm just another salary-man riding off to work, if in a fragrant limousine.
I will play three rounds with S.K., the fourth compliments of the head of one of the country's major newspapers. In terms of prestige and exclusiveness, S.K. tells me my routing will be like visiting New York and playing Shinnecock, Winged Foot, Baltusrol and Pine Valley over a long weekend, and that it's unlikely that anyone has ever played four such consecutive rounds in the history of Korean golf. I am deeply honored, of course, if also somewhat horrified, assuming the golf gods will surely disapprove of my ascension to such a rarefied set of tee boxes, and likely strike me down with a white-hot 1-iron (or worse, instill me with the hubristic notion of replacing my 5-wood with one).
The clubs near Seoul are Anyang Benest (short for "Best Nest") and Midas, which represent the zenith of Korean golf: Midas one of the newest clubs, a hilltop refuge for billionaires, Anyang the lushly manicured grand dame. The other two golf courses, Pinx and Nine Bridges, are on Jeju, the semi-tropical resort island just south of the Korean peninsula famed for the beauty of its diver-women and the intense flavor of its black-bristled swine. I'd been there many years before on a trip with my parents and remembered the island being overrun not by lovely mermaids or tasty pigs but by scores of newlyweds slow-touring the countryside on horseback, the brides sitting demurely side-saddle and often wearing traditional Korean dress, the grooms dutifully leading the horses on foot. I'll focus here on Anyang, for although there are clear differences in style (patrician Anyang, opulent Midas, Western-leaning Nine Bridges, haute-designed Pinx), the consistency of the details of the club setup and operation is astounding.
We are greeted at the Anyang clubhouse by a phalanx of uniformed staff (no teenagers in khakis and club-logo shirts here) and with an employee-to-guest ratio that appears to be around 5-to-1 (most of the house staff attractive young women in form-fitting outfits and lots of makeup), the place more like a luxury boutique hotel than a golf club. After changing we have a luscious traditional abalone porridge for breakfast, the first of three meals we'll have at the club today.
At the first tee, we are warmly welcomed with greetings and bows by the caddie master, golf club manager and the two caddies. The senior caddie, a gregarious young woman named Ms. Kim, immediately leads us in a vigorous pre-round stretch session, then hands me my driver and describes the hole and the ideal shot. After my drive and approach she seems to know all of my yardages, and for the rest of the round she'll just hand me a club and point the way and sweetly remind me to swing smoothly. And although my score certainly won't reflect it, the round is indeed silky smooth, almost disconcertingly effortless, Ms. Kim even marking my ball for me on the greens, so that the only time I handle it is to tee it up, or when I have to reach into the bag after spraying one into a pond. Playing bogey golf has never been so pleasing.
But the food is the real glory. I'm a food guy, and normally I'd never go near any golf club if I were looking for a fine meal, but at Anyang (and the others) the fare is outstanding, the equal of any restaurant in Seoul, which I realize the masters-of-the-universe members no doubt expect. The best part is that on Korean courses there are two places (called "shade houses") to rest and eat and drink, after the sixth and 12th holes, exquisitely designed climate-controlled cottages where you order from a menu of noodles and spicy casseroles and freshly made juices and herbal teas. No hot dogs or sodden chicken wraps here. My favorite dish is a dessert of chilled persimmon compote (from trees on the Anyang grounds), sweet and bursting with the tangy flavor, a perfect follow-up to my savory black bean noodles. And as we play the 12th, instead of setting up my shot I'm considering the merits of having another bowl of noodles--this time, buckwheat in cold bouillon--but opt instead for a fresh strawberry juice, as I know we're to have a "simple" lunch after the round (a tasty multi-course menu, it turns out, of sashimi, scallion fritters, and a spicy fish stew, along with lots of OB lager).
After the round Ms. Kim gives me a friendly hug, and we retire to the locker room, which is like the ultra-high end spa of a Four Seasons in Bali or Thailand, the granite-paneled toilette area dramatically lighted and piped-in with soft classical music. The main feature here, behind automatic sliding-glass doors, is the moh-gyoak-tahng, or the bath; imagine a sumptuous Roman setup of the sort you'd see in a Burton-Taylor picture, but sleekly recast into three slate-lined plunge pools (cool, hot, hotter), looking out through a huge wall of glass onto an exquisite rock and flower garden. But you don't just jump in; there's a way of the bath, namely that you strip down to your skivvies at your locker, then strip completely at another, smaller, set of lockers next to the showers, where you scrub yourself clean with rough brushes and loofahs and stand under the cascade of a Frisbee-size shower head before finally wading into one of the communal tubs for the long, good soak. And it is here, in the mineral-fortified water, that I begin to recount the day, literally, all the shots realized (and not), all the drinks and dishes consumed (and not), and I now understand why playing a round in Korea takes the entire day: because you very much want it to. For here you want to escape the pace and high pressure and noxious air of the city, you want to linger in the "shade houses" and along the fairways redolent of camellia and wild rose, you want to flirt with your expert white-gloved caddie, you want your fill of the sweet and the savory, and then, in between, play the great game, too. At least just a bit.
Chang-rae Lee's third novel, Aloft, is being published in March. His last piece for Golf Digest was on camping out for a tee time at Bethpage State Park in June 2002.
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