Golf in Korea – Fairway Journal

Incheon Grand CC: My Confidence Booster 🌙 🌱 Round Conditions ★★★☆☆ I first visited Incheon Grand when a friend had their “first tee ceremony,” and I ended up coming often during the COVID years. Pros Excellent accessibility (one of the best in the western Seoul metro area) Wide fairways → mishits aren’t embarrassing Entirely flat → even for lazy golfer like me, the 18-hole walk is a picnic Cons Green conditions very poor (speed around 2.3 at night) Short course → at least 2 holes where you can’t use driver Walking-only → if the group ahead is slow, you just wait endlessly 😅 They have these 4-bag automated carts that only carry your bags 💰 Night Green Fees (Saturday, Aug 30) Green fee: ₩169,000 Cart: ₩68,000 (big carts carry all the bags; caddie walks with you) Caddie fee: ₩160,000 Note: Night rounds require pre-payment! 🏢 Facilities & F&B ★★★★☆ The club was renovated before/after COVID, so it’s fairly clean for an older course. Showers & p...

I hit the ball, but it bounced off the pole and rolled right back in front of me... lol  

📱 Icon, Why Are You Even Here? I heard that if you build an AAB file, you can upload it to Google Play and download it directly. So I happily built one, uploaded it, and installed it on my phone. And then… huh? Why does my icon look like this? I never put that in there. The app title was wrong too! Apparently, it was the default placeholder icon you get when you first create a project—ugly, generic, and absolutely not mine. What's this abomination?? Oh my eyes... This had to be fixed. 🎯 Down the Icon Design Rabbit Hole That’s when I finally realized the importance of having a decent icon. In my ignorance, I asked ChatGPT for ideas: “Something that feels like record-keeping + a golf ball or flag, green tones.” It gave me a golf club and a ball on a tee. I was too lazy to argue, so I went with it. Uploaded it… and the logo was cropped. Adaptive icon? Apparently, it “adjusts” itself as it pleases. The original placeholder icon actually had a useful triple-circle guide for designing ...

  🎯 The Trigger – “Might As Well” Syndrome After the big UI overhaul went smoother than expected, I was at peace again within a week. And then… the fatal thought: “While I’m at it…” The kind of thought that makes you go out to buy a compact car and come home with a Mercedes. That one “might as well” cost me another week. 🥏 While I’m At It… Why Not Driver Ball Flight Arrows? Since I was already making the detailed scorecard sleek, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be more intuitive if driver ball flights were shown as arrows? You could see the pattern at a glance!” This is how my lit-major brain works. Once I latch onto an idea, I can’t let it go. I asked GPT to make me some arrows. Nope—wrong direction. ^^ So I opened PowerPoint and made my own PNG arrows. In my head, the logic was simple: For all other columns, show the value as entered. For the “Driver” column, replace the value with the corresponding arrow image. So why didn’t it work? GPT:  “It might be a path issue.” What I saw: ...

  🏌️‍♀️ First Field Test Hi, I’m Tini 🐰 Today’s episode: my first field test with the app! 📖 Comic: First Field Test 😅 Situation Recap Straight drive? ✅ Logged Birdie? ✅ Logged Mom called? ❌ Data gone Lesson learned: always save, always back up, and make autosave 🛠 Development Behind the Scenes 🤔 Why this happened? At that time, my code didn’t have autosave. So the moment a call came in → poof, everything disappeared. It took me two late nights to fix it, but I finally got autosave working. 📊 App Growth Diary ✔ Added autosave ✔ Fixed PDF export bug 🔜 Coming next: stat cards! 🎉 Wrap-up Thanks for reading! Next episode: “The Bug That Ate My Stats” 👉 Try Fairway Journal Pro on Google Play!

"A uniquely Korean golf experience that might just spoil you for life." In Korea, you don’t get to choose whether to have a caddie — you must. Caddie + cart is mandatory at almost every course. And it’s not cheap: the average caddie fee is around $120 (shared among four players). So if you’re stuck with him or her, you might as well make the most of it. Here’s why having a Korean caddie can actually be a huge advantage.

  🎯 Starting Point – Too Much Effort Not to Release It I made this app for myself, but I poured in way too much time and effort. (My hourly rate is not cheap.) I started feeling… wronged. People leave their names behind when they die— my app should leave some kind of mark too. So I thought, Fine, I’ll put it on the store so it leaves a trace. If my friends in the US or Hong Kong download it, they’ll at least get a laugh out of it. So I asked ChatGPT how to get an app onto the Play Store. 🛠 The Surprisingly Fussy Prep Work Publishing on Google Play goes like this: Make a developer account → pay $25 Answer a ridiculous number of questions Decide whether it’s free or paid First-time devs must run a “closed test” (12 users, 2 weeks of verification) Thoroughly explain your dev process and bug fixes Wait for release approval It’s tedious, but I’m the type who finds tedious things fun, so I went for it. Made the account. Paid the fee. “If I get 5 friends to give me $8 each, I’ll break e...

  🌟 Why Play Night Golf at Saltbay GC? Salt Bay Golf Club is a popular night golf option near Incheon, especially when you’re looking for good value . The course is relatively forgiving, the LED lighting is excellent, and the natural grass driving range is a big plus. (Many golf clubs in Korea don't have driving ranges, let alone a grass one!) That said, the greens here are always slow — probably the slowest I’ve played around Seoul. Personally, I don’t mind too much, since on slow greens if you get the distance right, the ball tends to drop. Just beware: the mosquitoes here are vicious. Think of it as giving blood and playing golf in one night 😅. Also, tee time waits can be on the longer side when playing night golf Source: Saltbay GC webpage

 Hi, I’m Tini 🐰 Whenever I played golf, there was always one thing that annoyed me: paper scorecards . They get soggy in the rain, writing on them is a hassle, and keeping track of stats later? Forget about it. So I decided to build my own app. Yep. Me. 📖 The Story  🤔 But… I’m not a coder That’s right — I had zero coding background. With the help of AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, I slowly learned how to put things together. Lots of late nights, trial and error, but eventually the app started to come alive. 📊 Features I Really Wanted ✔️ Simple, quick score input ✔️ Fairway hit %, GIR, and putting averages ✔️ Clean design with no ads, no Wi-Fi needed ✔️ A beautiful scorecard report you’d actually want to keep 🎉 From “just for me” to “why not share?” At first, I built it just for myself. But after playing a few rounds with it, I realized it could be useful for others too. So I published it on the Google Play Store as Fairway Journal Pro . 📲 Try it out For...

Here’s a short comic I made before Tini the rabbit was even designed. It tells the story of why I decided to create Fairway Journal Pro . 👉  [Download Fairway Journal Pro]

⛳  The Heart-Pounding Field Test Determined not to repeat the Saipan disaster, I exported my shiny new app as an APK, installed it on my phone, and headed out to the course. Goal:  Since I’d shot in the 80s last time, aim for a stable bogey round. Reality:  102. My driver was actually working for once, so I confidently logged “Straight” and “Push” as I played. In between, I thought, “Maybe I should add a function to track topped shots, worm burners, and OBs too.” 🏌 A Quick Gear Detour Center-shaft putters were all the rage, so my sister and I spent four hours hitting every brand we could find: PXG, Evnroll, Bettinardi, Callaway, TaylorMade… and probably more I forgot. I ended up buying the  Bettinardi Antidote  purely because it was cute. (I’ve been a loyal Bettinardi putter fan for five years—four putters in five years.) But… why doesn’t mine roll straight? I bought it to fix my 1–2 meter putts, but it’s somehow ruining my long putts too. Let’s just blame my 1...