[Best Golf Courses for Walking] Pinehills Country Club, 'Suncheon’s Hidden Gem'

Opening of 27-Hole Public Golf Course in 2004
40-50 Year-Old Red Pines, Distinctive Features by Course
Popular Seasonal Ingredient Dishes Full of Flavor and Style
Scenic Suncheonman National Garden and Suncheonman Wetland

Golf is an attractive sport. It is an activity that allows healing in nature. When COVID-19 broke out in 2020, it was popular as a relatively safe sport. The charm of golf lies in being able to take care of your health while walking on green grass. Playing one round means walking more than 10,000 steps. Asia Economy has been promoting the nationwide brain health project called Hamanhacheon (One Day Ten Thousand Steps, One Day Thousand Characters) exercise since 2023. Since the 15th of last month, it has started the untact ‘Golf Course Grass Ten Thousand Steps Walking Challenge.’ This event runs until July 14.

Pinehills Country Club is the best course for walking golf, with its wide fairways.

◆ChiGO= Pine Hills Country Club is a public 27-hole golf course that opened in 2004. It is located at the foot of Jogyesan Mountain (884m) in Suncheon, Jeollanam-do. It is surrounded like a folding screen by Donghak Mountain and Siru Mountain at an altitude of 580m. It is situated in a basin densely populated with 40- to 50-year-old red pine trees. It was designed by Ronald Fream, who also created Nine Bridges CC and Asiana CC. ‘Pine Hills’ means pine tree hills. The vast nature of 3,305,785㎡ (1 million pyeong) with sea pines and red pines as a deep forest is the backdrop.

The 27-hole course, of international tournament scale, has a total length of 9,435m. It is called the ‘hidden gem of Suncheon’ not only by local golfers but also by golfers from all over the country. Package products are popular. It is a healing Pine Hills package of one night and two days or more for golfers nationwide who want to enjoy the fun of golf along with the surrounding scenery. Weekend package products receive favorable reviews, including Namdo traditional Korean cuisine.

Pinehills Country Club is a beautiful golf course where exotic lakes and pine trees harmonize.

◆WalkGO= The three courses?Pine, Lake, and Hills?each have different characteristics. Their difficulty levels vary. The Pine Course maximizes the use of natural environments and terrain such as clear streams flowing all year round, pine forests, and rock formations. Each hole requires precise shots. It is a dynamic course with a masculine feel. The Lake Course is a beautiful place where large and small mounds and exotic lakes harmonize. It is a delicate and feminine course. The Hills Course is a place where you can feel the hometown atmosphere and abundance along with the legend of Toseong Chilgyo. It is a dynamic hole that requires strategic attacks.

Pine Hills Country Club is perfect for walking golf. It is a clean golf course. It is hard to see weeds. The scenery harmonized with nature is impressive. The course has various ups and downs. The fairway width is wide. It adopts a one-green system. The green changes are diverse, allowing you to fully enjoy the charm of putting. Four to five teeing grounds are made per hole. The view changes depending on the tee shot location, allowing you to feel the freshness of the course. Tee-offs are spaced 7 to 8 minutes apart, enabling a relaxed round. Although it has converted to a public golf course, it still insists on a membership operation system for course quality, facility management, and service.

The clubhouse of Finehills Country Club is the perfect place to enjoy a comfortable rest.

◆EatGO= The clubhouse is modern and sophisticated. It is the perfect place to enjoy a comfortable rest. On the second floor, there is a large dining hall, group rooms, and VIP rooms. You can have elegant meals and conversations in the beautiful great outdoors. You experience flavorful dishes full of the taste and style of Namdo. Food is made with seasonal ingredients that come out each season. In the morning, beef market soup, dried pollack hangover soup, and dried shrimp and spinach soybean paste soup are served. For lunch and dinner, you can eat barley grilled croaker & soybean paste stew, spicy codfish stew, vegetable yukjeon bibimbap, and more.

Single dishes such as natural pine sea cucumber stir-fry, beef rib mushroom hot pot, and cuttlefish pork belly ssambap are also popular. There is also a Hills and Pine full-course meal for four people. The Hills full-course meal includes angelica leaf bulgogi cold salad, porridge or soup, barley grilled croaker, stir-fried webfoot octopus with pork, stir-fried beef with eggplant, beef yukjeon, steamed egg, and assorted beef mushroom hot pot. At the start house, customers await dishes such as seafood jajangmyeon, old-fashioned fried chicken, assorted sundae & pollack sashimi salad, and gochujang bulgogi & tofu kimchi.

The hotel at Pinehills Country Club is a complex relaxation space with 36 rooms.

Opened in 2015, Pine Hills Hotel is a complex relaxation space with a total of 36 rooms in a five-story building with a total floor area of 3,705㎡. It boasts the first hotel-scale facility among accommodation facilities linked to golf courses in the eastern region of Jeollanam-do. The rooms are composed of various types: Standard (27 rooms), Suite (7 rooms), and Royal Suite (2 rooms). It provides a 40-inch smart TV, high-speed wireless internet, coffee, and tea bags. The view is excellent. It overlooks the ridge of Jogyesan Mountain, where Songgwangsa Temple is located, and the panorama of Pine Hills Golf Course.

At Suncheon Bay National Garden, you can see various gardens and animals from around the world.
[Photo by Korea Tourism Organization]

◆PlayGO= Suncheonman National Garden is the best. It started with the 2013 Suncheonman International Garden Expo. It was designated as the first national garden in 2015. The garden site in Dosadong, Suncheon, covers 1,120,000㎡ (340,000 pyeong) and is planted with 505 species of trees totaling 790,000 trees and 113 species of flowers totaling 3.15 million plants. You can encounter various gardens such as world traditional gardens, theme gardens, participatory gardens, open gardens, and one-pyeong gardens. On the west gate side, you can see animals at the children’s zoo, WWT wetland, and water bird playground. There is also a therapy garden where you can heal your body and mind and rest with nature. A small unmanned rail train (PRT) runs between Suncheonman Garden and Suncheon Literature Museum (4.64 km).

Suncheonman Wetland is also spectacular. It consists of a dense reed colony of 5.4㎢ (1.6 million pyeong) and a vast mudflat of 22.6㎢ (6.9 million pyeong) that seems endless. In winter, internationally protected migratory rare birds such as the black-faced spoonbill, hooded crane, yellow-billed spoonbill, whooper swan, and black-headed gull visit Suncheonman. A total of about 230 species of migratory birds are found in Suncheonman, accounting for about half of all bird species in Korea. Mudflat creatures such as mud crabs, shore crabs, and mudskippers live together in harmony.