Outwith

AS DUSK fell, a restaurant-lined lane in Seoul's Mapo district filled with customers. While many loosened their ties and bought a round, at Kwon Sung-woon's place men took off their ties and prepared to play a round – of golf.

Swinging real clubs, they took on St Andrews, Pebble Beach in California, and other famed courses around the world. Of course, it was all computer-simulated: they hit their balls into 4-by-3-yard plastic screens showing projections of virtual-reality fairways.

Simulated golf has been around in Europe and the United States for years, mainly as a teaching aid at golf clinics or on cruise ships where passengers are no longer allowed to hit balls into the ocean. But in South Korea, where golf courses are expensive and overbooked, virtual-reality golf has become a fast-growing pastime, almost as commonplace in bars as pool tables and dart boards.

Simulator makers even organise virtual-reality tournaments, with money, cars or a ticket to play at a real golf tournament as prizes. Thousands participate, and cable channels show the final matches.

"One day, we want to host a global simulated golf championship," said Lim Won-june, marketing manager at Golfzon, South Korea's leading maker of golf simulators.

"In our country, there are too many golfers for too few golf courses," said Kim Young-woo, 46, who recently played an 18-hole round with two friends at Kwon's establishment, Pastel Screen Golf. "This is a cheap and time-saving alternative for people like us, who can't play real golf often enough."

Kwon, 43, a former computer engineer, opened his golf cafe three months ago, shelling out $138,000 to install four golf simulators. Since then, six competitors have moved into his neighborhood alone. Still, Kwon has no trouble filling his four rooms with customers, seven days a week, from 9am until well past midnight.

Some of them do not know a sand wedge from a 5-iron, much less have a membership at a country club.

"Six p.m. to midnight is the peak," Kwon said. "But some patrons play until 5 a.m. This is quite addictive."

Apparently. The number of golf cafes in South Korea, which tend to have ten to 10 simulation rooms, reached 2,500 last year, up from 300 in 2003. Seven out of every 10 golf simulators sold in the world are installed in South Korea, according to industry officials here.

Each day, an estimated 200,000 people play virtual-reality golf in South Korea, six times as many as play at real courses, the officials say. In this highly wired country, where professional leagues of online video games attract throngs of teenage fans, middle-aged people compete in simulated golf championships, thanks to the online network connecting the golf cafes.

"It's picture-perfect, down to every tree," Kim Ae-hee, 42, a homemaker, said of the 50 simulated courses she could choose from with a few mouse clicks.

On the screen, clouds roll by in high definition. Tree branches sway in a virtual breeze. Birds twitter. The ball drops into a water hazard and creates virtual ripples, swishes through tree leaves or rolls into the hole with a satisfying rattle while spectators cheer.

On a recent Sunday at Kasco Golf Club, a six-screen golf cafe in western Seoul, Kim and her husband selected their favorite course – Sun Hill Country Club, north of Seoul – and set the weather and wind conditions for an 18-hole game.

Kim placed a ball on a tee and hit it with her driver. Her husband, Choi Hong-ick, who sat on a sofa holding a fried chicken leg and a beer, shouted, "Nice shot!"

The screen recalibrated to show Kim the view from her ball's new position to the flag. As she prepared her next shot, the computer tilted the swing mat to replicate the incline and advised which club to use. Later it also helped her visualize her putt; virtual drops of water crawled across the screen to indicate how the green sloped.

"It helps you play a better game on the actual course," Choi said. "We come here once a week."