札幌ゴルフ倶楽部輪厚コース

Few courses in Japan carry the prestige of Sapporo Golf Club's Wattsu Course. Designed by Koichi Ōta and opened in 1961, it stands as one of Hokkaido's most respected private layouts and has earned a lasting place in Japanese golf's upper tier. The club has hosted the Japan Open Golf Championship multiple times — a rare honor that signals the course's ability to test the country's finest professionals — and its conditioning and strategic demands have made it a benchmark for northern Japanese golf.

The setting in Kitahiroshima, just southeast of Sapporo, places the course in Hokkaido's rolling interior, where the terrain breaks naturally into ridges and valleys carved by the island's volcanic geology. Summers here are cool and short by Japanese standards, producing firm, fast turf conditions that reward precise ball-striking over raw distance. The fairways move with the land rather than against it, and mature trees frame most holes without turning the round into a purely target-golf exercise.

Wattsu is a course that rewards repeat visits. Its routing reveals subtleties — angles off the tee, false fronts, the way the wind shifts through the valley corridors — that don't fully register on a first round. For serious golfers visiting Hokkaido, it represents the island's gold standard in private-club golf.