June 7, Lijiang: Playing the longest and highest course in the world

Today’s objective was to get a round of golf in at Lijiang Snow Mountain, which from the back tees measures 8,548 yards. That’s not a typo; the altitude at which the course is played (10,500 feet or so) means the ball flies a bit further in the thin air. In any case, it’s the longest course in the world, played at the highest altitude as well.
Actually getting there was a bit of a trek. The course is located near the base camp from the day before, but without a tour group and in a taxi instead, there were a few more hoops to jump through – getting passes into the area from an office in town, etc.
In any case, we finally made it up there around lunchtime and had a meal up in the clubhouse, with the mountain range and the course providing a scenic backdrop:

We rented clubs, bought some golf balls, and hit the links.
It was quite an experience, to say the least. Caddies and carts are required in Asia while golfing. They run to the ball, and quote you measurements in yards taking into the wind and green elevation, which, as one may assume, was at times severe – we were playing on the side of a mountain, after all.
The difficulty came in the fact that outside of the numbers and the occasional “right” or “left,” Alex and I had absolutely no clue what we were being told. It was a hilarious experience, however… the caddies jump on the back of the cart, which has a foot ledge, and say “okay,” and off we go. The course is cart path only, meaning that you cannot drive on the fairways, so one would drive the cart until the caddie said “okay” again, meaning something along the lines of, “alllllright buddy, go hit it again.”
The mountain air really helped distances off the tee, but made it difficult to club coming into greens. The greens were heavily sanded, and were impossible to read. The additional burden of borrowed clubs was, um, interesting. If it sounds like I’m making a bunch of excuses for how I played, you would be right. I shot 50 on the front, with a couple of horrific holes that involved, um, well, a mountain and water. 46 on the back made things a little more bearable.
We were unable to play the course at record length – it’s reserved for tournaments, so we played the next set of tees. Even there, the course played almost 7800 yards, and featured several par-4’s longer than 475 and 2 par fives bigger than 600 yards. Chris is really long off the tee – not always straight, but long, and must have had 3-4 drives approach the 360+ distance. I crushed one drive on this shot here:

I think I hit it about 320 or so, which was a nice experience – until I still had 295 into the green on a par-5 and pull-hooked a 3 iron into the water. Good times.
In any case, Alex played well considering that he doesn’t play much, especially in the latter holes, where he drained a few there’s-no-way-that’s-going-in but it did putts. Chris had a couple of eagle putts, and like me, struggled with distances coming into greens. But we all had a great time, and it really was one of the more enjoyable golfing experiences I’ve ever had. See the picture below:


More soon!

Mike