Golf Club Shijohnawate

Golf Club Shijohnawate has played host to golfers in the city of Shijonawate, on Osaka's eastern edge against the Ikoma mountains, since 1960, when it was laid out by architect Giichi Sato. The course measures 6,809 yards from the back markers with a slope rating of 123, a genuinely testing number that reflects the terrain typical of Osaka's foothill courses. As a semi-private facility it offers golf carts and caddies for visiting play, along with a driving range, a bunker practice area, and a putting green for warming up before the round. The clubhouse includes lockers and locker rooms, and the course operates year round while accepting JCB and Visa payments. Shijonawate city takes its name from a decisive medieval battle fought nearby in 1348, and the surrounding Ikoma mountain range gives the course a backdrop of wooded hillsides quite different from the flatter courses found closer to central Osaka. Having carried the same design since the early 1960s, the layout retains the routing conventions of Japan's postwar golf boom, when courses were built into hillside terrain rather than reshaping flat ground. The combination of history in both the town's name and the course's own six-decade run gives Shijonawate a sense of place that newer developments lack. Golfers exploring Osaka's eastern hill courses through CoGolfers can add Golf Club Shijohnawate to their list, and the community is a good way to find others heading out to this part of the prefecture.