Kobe Golf Club

Kobe Golf Club, perched atop Mount Rokko in Kobe's Nada-ku ward, holds the distinction of being Japan's very first golf course, built in 1903 by British merchant Arthur Hesketh Groom and his fellow expatriates. The club maintains several deliberately old-fashioned traditions as living links to that pioneering history, including a strict prohibition on golf carts and a limit of ten clubs per player, practices that set it apart from virtually every other modern course in the country. Playing to a compact 4,049 yards and a par of 61, the course reflects the more modest scale typical of golf's earliest era, long before the championship-length layouts that followed decades later. The mountaintop setting offers sweeping views over Kobe and Osaka Bay, a genuinely spectacular backdrop unmatched by most of the prefecture's other courses. As the birthplace of Japanese golf, the club carries historical significance well beyond its modest yardage, drawing golf history enthusiasts specifically to experience where the sport began in the country. Golfers interested in golf's Japanese origins through CoGolfers can seek out Kobe Golf Club for its unmatched historical pedigree, walking the same mountaintop where the country's golf story first began in 1903.