Montvert (Printemps & Ete)

The 36-hole golf complex at Montvert Country Club is situated in Pocheon, to the north of Kyeong-gi province and it’s laid out in mountainous territory close to Myeong Sung Mountain, near the border with North Korea. It’s an area that’s renowned for the therapeutic qualities of the mineral waters that spout from deep below the surface of the earth via hot springs.

The original owner is said to have gone to extraordinary lengths to construct what was originally called San-jeong Lake Golf Club in the late 1980s, with a 60-man dynamite squad spending weeks blasting the granite outcrops and shifting an incredible 25 million cubic yards of earth to cut and fill the landscape for the fairways.

Designed by Sang-Ha Im and Desmond Muirhead, a man well known for laying out golf courses in difficult terrain, the main 18-hole North layout consists of the Printemps and Ete nines – with the South course comprising the easier Otone and Evert nines – and the par four 9th hole on the Ete circuit is considered the signature hole, doglegging left to an island green that’s accessed by a number of stone bridges.