World Country Golf Club

World Country Golf Club has operated in Kanan-cho, in the hills of southeastern Osaka prefecture near the border with Nara and Wakayama, since 1997, designed by the American architect Rick Jacobson and playing a genuinely long 7,077 yards from the championship tees, among the longer scorecards found anywhere in the prefecture. As a semi-private facility built in the late 1990s, the course reflects more contemporary American-influenced design principles than many of Osaka's older, Japanese-architect layouts from the 1950s through 1970s, with wider corridors and more strategic bunkering typical of Jacobson's international body of work. Amenities include golf carts and caddies, a putting green for practice, a restaurant, meeting facilities, and full locker rooms, and the club operates year round while accepting Visa and JCB among other major credit cards. Kanan-cho sits in the Kongo mountain range along Osaka's southeastern border, an area of genuine natural scenery within the prefecture, quite different from the dense urban core closer to Osaka city, and the town also lies close to Izumigaoka Golf Club and Sakai Country Club, giving this corner of the prefecture a small cluster of golf facilities. The championship-scale length at World Country has made it a respected test for stronger players in the Kansai region looking for a genuine challenge outside the private-club circuit. Golfers looking for a long, modern test in southeastern Osaka through CoGolfers can consider World Country Golf Club, and the community is a good place to find partners capable of tackling its full length.