I of course will be blogging here as well so feel free to check in here for my personal updates. After playing on the Gold Coast last week finishing Sunday I made the gruelling trip up here with all the other Aussies competing this week. We left the Gold Coast at 8:30pm for the drive to Brisbane airport and caught a flight to Singapore through the night. After a 3 hr stopover it was onto the second leg from Singapore to Seoul. Arriving in Seoul was met with a 2hr wait for the bus that would take us the 3 and a half hours to the hotel, getting in at 8:50pm, just over 24hrs after we left the Gold Coast!! I was wrecked as were the other 25 Aussies on the trip.
After a little sleep in on Tuesday it was off to practice before the practice round. the course is very solid and will be a good challenge this week. I have never seen fairways narrower in my life, just thankful that the rough is playable. On a couple of holes the fairways were only 7-10 paces wide, quite challenging! The course and venue is up in the mountains and the Hotel here at High 1 is apparently the site for the 2018 Winter Olympics. It is an incredibly beautiful course set in the mountains with spectacular views and a cable car going overhead on a couple of holes. I took the trip up the cable car today right up to the summit of the mountain where the top of the ski fields are. I wish it was snowing so that I could have gone skiing, it's been far too long!!
Back to the course, it is very strong because of the tight fairways which makes your tee shots critical. It has a great mix of par 3's with them all being over water but ranging from 7 iron to 3 wood. They are very tough and I will be very happy if I can have pars there all week. The par 4's and 5's create some opportunity to score although once again your tee shots will be absolutely vital. The greens are massive here and some of them have slopes so big that they could nearly use them for the Halfpipe at the 2018 games!! Positioning your ball will be critical when hitting into the greens otherwise the chance of birdie let alone par will be very difficult.
I have worked my way through the course coming up with a plan for every shot, so now it simply becomes a matter of executing the plan and dealing with the outcomes in the best way possible. I am looking forward to the challenge and am hitting the ball really well so I am hoping that a great result will follow. As usual I have added some photos from the course, it is spectacular so enjoy!!