Golf Club de St Germain (pictures)

[Philip Gawith]

This is an old Harry Colt layout in the Western suburbs of Paris. It is not the most exciting piece of land - mostly flat - but Colt built a course full of strategic interest and the club has done a wonderful job of honouring its architectural heritage, with the considerable assistance of Stuart Hallet, sometime GCA poster who has been greenkeeper there for a number of years (but has just left to set up in practice as a GCA). The bunkering is particularly good.

It is a fun place to visit overall - a visibly successful members club with class.



2nd hole



Approach to 2nd...



Looking back on the enormous second green



Side view of the 7th green which you pass after the third hole, a tight two-shotter next the railway line.



4th hole - sweeping to the left...



The 5th - a fine short hole playing around 180 yards.



Cross bunkering on the par 5 6th adding interest to the otherwise flat land



The short 7th - note how built up the green is, notwithstanding the flat property. Most likely he got the soil from the nearby railway cutting.




Closer up shot of the 7th showing the enormous false front to the green.



View back towards the clubhouse.



Approach to Eight - while the course has a few straight holes, they are not without strategic interest....It also has a fine mix of dog-leg holes in both directions as part of a really good routing.



The clubhouse



The fun 10th hole - just a layup off the tee and then a pitch to a smallish green.



The short 11th - reverse direction to seven, and this one you have fly the front bunker.




The drive on 14....if you bang it over the left, you are left with a short flip to the green on a hole measuring well over 400 yards.



A view of the 14th green..



The driveable uphill 16th - yours truly put in the right greenside bunker and is still in there with his spade!



17  - the final, and possibly best, of a strong set of short-holes



With this huge dip if you don't hit enough club



 A tough drive on the strong finishing two-shotter, with the cross bunkering again adding interest and challenge.

[Tim Pitner]

Thank you for the photos, Philip--looks like great fun, to me.  

[Joe Andriole]

I had the pleasure of enjoying the charms of St Germain just  a month ago.  It is a delightful course and a well preserved Colt design.  The huge 2nd gree pictured is the result of a recent enlargement.  A rail line bisects the course and the routing is a bit contrived; the course is a bit short for the modern player but there is much to admire here especially the conditioning.

[Tim Gavrich]

Wow, between St. Germain and Morfontaine, one could do quite well to explore France avec des batons du golf.

[Mitch St. Peter]

The course looks awesome....Thank you for these pictures.

How difficult was it to get on the course? It looks like it was in great shape....any unique characteristics to how the course was conditioned?  Did

I've always been interested in playing some of the great old clubs outside of the english speaking world...as evidenced by these pictures there is a lot more out there than most of us are aware of.

[Paul_Turner]

Philip

Nice to see pics of St Germain again.

It's the features that make the course.  The greens are beautifully constructed with those neat fall offs and mounding.  And the club has done a super job in restoring the bunkers...a nice mix of central/cross and flanking bunkers.   We really liked the twisting routing: out over the railtrack, looping roughly in a figure 8 back to the clubhouse...back out over the railtrack and looping back home.

But they need to do something about that second portion of the 2nd green.

At about 6900 yards it's actually one of Colt's longest; he doesn't have many stretched to over the 7000 mark!

[Mike_Cirba]

Jeez, that looks fantastic.

It looks like a cross between Hidden Creek and Hollywood, with some PV thrown in for good measure.

[Joe Hancock]

Concerning the cross bunkers that appear to be right in front of the tees....would these be acceptable if this was a (insert name of less liked architect here) course? What function do they serve, other than punishing a bad shot and some aesthetic function?

I do like some of the funky shaping though.

Joe

[Mike_Cirba]

Concerning the cross bunkers that appear to be right in front of the tees....would these be acceptable if this was a (insert name of less liked architect here) course? What function do they serve, other than punishing a bad shot and some aesthetic function?

Joe,

We need to talk.

You've hit my pet peeve.  

Why should golf be boring, stilted, lifeless, and devoid of all interest and challenge if you hit the ball 150 yards or so or less off the tee, as is the case often with kids, ladies, and seniors.

Should everything be clear sailing til we get out to where the REAL drives land, at lets say 250 yards from the tee before we start the golf course?

Lord, give me something to play for and negotiate when I'm 80 years old, unless I'm ageless like Bill Dow and a couple of others I know!  

The JOY of challenging a hazard successfully is one of the most fundamental attractions of the game.   I think we fail a large percentage of potential golfers by giving low handicap golfers one game and putting up the equivalent of gutter bumpers or handicap ramps for the rest of the world.

I think Tillinghast was wrong when he called them "Duffer's Headaches", and at his low moments, he seems like he could really be a glass-half-empty kinda guy.  

Instead, they should be viewed as "duffer's delights"!

[Joe Hancock]

Mike,

I take that as a "yes, it's acceptable", then?...

My point was more about bias...

I wouldn't disagree with your position, unless a course feeds a steady diet of this....which doesn't appear to be the case here.

Joe

[Adam_Messix]

St. Germain is quite a course.  Mike Cirba's comparison to Hidden Creek is excellent.  To add interest where there was none, Colt seemed to pile dirt up and carve a bunker out of it.  One other note, the bunkers at St. Germain have coarse, brown river sand that takes some getting used to, but I really liked it.  

[Philip Gawith]

Concerning the cross bunkers that appear to be right in front of the tees....would these be acceptable if this was a (insert name of less liked architect here) course? What function do they serve, other than punishing a bad shot and some aesthetic function?

Joe,

We need to talk.

You've hit my pet peeve.  

Why should golf be boring, stilted, lifeless, and devoid of all interest and challenge if you hit the ball 150 yards or so or less off the tee, as is the case often with kids, ladies, and seniors.

Should everything be clear sailing til we get out to where the REAL drives land, at lets say 250 yards from the tee before we start the golf course?

Lord, give me something to play for and negotiate when I'm 80 years old, unless I'm ageless like Bill Dow and a couple of others I know!  

The JOY of challenging a hazard successfully is one of the most fundamental attractions of the game.   I think we fail a large percentage of potential golfers by giving low handicap golfers one game and putting up the equivalent of gutter bumpers or handicap ramps for the rest of the world.

I think Tillinghast was wrong when he called them "Duffer's Headaches", and at his low moments, he seems like he could really be a glass-half-empty kinda guy.  

Instead, they should be viewed as "duffer's delights"!

I agree with Mr Cirba! Yes they partly serve an aesthetic function - which you need on a course which lacks natural features - but I think Mike is quite right that for weaker golfers the sense of challenge from clearing them makes them indeed "duffers delight". And even for better golfers they have a subconscious effect.

Conditioning of the course....yes, it is in good nick and our group certainly found the greens pretty challenging. They had a lot of role on them - and that was October. I can imagine in the height of summer they must be quite something.

Access....I did not do the organising and it is quite a smart club, but I don't get the sense that it is difficult to get on in the way that, say, Morfontaine is.

And to those who are stimulated to play some golf in continental Europe by these pictures....that would be a good move! There are other strong courses in France, not to mention the joys of Netherlands and Belgium.

[Ally Mcintosh]

that looks lovely, philip... i am a fan of the bunkering as well...

let me ask you a question (robbing from a thread i started yetserday)... if i were to travel to paris for three rounds, where would i play?... fontainebleau and here... where else can your average joe soap get on?... how close are these courses together?

that aside, some of those photos remind me slightly of little aston (vardon, colt) which i played for the first time in the summer...

[Philip Gawith]

Ally I think I would add Chantilly to that list. I am not sure what criteria Morfontaine operate - it is possible to get on there, but not easy. In my case it was a letter from secretary at Royal Liverpool.

I think you will find Chantilly easier and it is also a fine couse (by chance, close to Morfontaine).

Steve Okula and Stuart Hallet are both GCA members and live in Paris and work on courses so know infinitely more than me. They may steer you towards local gems but i doubt they would demur with the three courses we are discussing.

[Steve Okula]

Philip,

Congratulations on some great camera work, your photos really bring out the best of the course.

[Ally Mcintosh]

thanks philip...

...one day soon i will plan this trip...

[John Sabino]

Philip - super pictures and the par 3s here look like a really good collection.

Mike Cirba - very well articulated position in defense of duffers!

[Noel Freeman]

Most if any golf tourists to France would kill for an invite to Mortfontaine.  It has the mystique and the perfect heathland setting.. But you know what, you will find more strategy and have more fun if you go to St. Germain and take on those bunkers and angles on a much more boring piece of land.  At least that was my experience...

[Kalen Braley]

I can't say I've ever seen a course with more top-shot bunkering. As has been noted, the bunkering in front of many of those tees looks like duffed shot catchers.  It could be that Phillip just zoomed in the view from the tee making them appear closer than they really are??

The course is simply beautiful and those push up greens look like they demand precise approaches.

Thanks for the pics Phillip.

[Pete Lavallee]

Philip,

Once again, thanks for a stunning set of photos; you have the uncanny ability to capture the esscence of the course with a handfull of shots. Although I suspect it's more a case of the Indian than the arrrow, what kind of camera do you use?

[Philip Gawith]

Thanks for the kind words Pete. I use a small little Sony, 6megapixels portable camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. Fits easily into golf bag, even my pocket. I must assure you that I am no camera buff so further inquiry is unlikely to prove rewarding!

Kalen - you are right that some of the shots I have zoomed a bit and hence bunkers appear closer than in reality they are. If you photo all the dead ground in between the pictures end up a bit dull!

[Jeff Spittel]

I wish some of the golf architects in flat-as-a-pancake Houston would take note of this design. You don't need to design a 7200 year course with water on 14 holes to make it interesting.

[Marc Haring]

If they have done a restoration job on the bunkers as Paul Turner suggests, they’ve done a terrific job. I thought it might be a case of the French way of just leaving things exactly as they have always been; just like their houses, WW2 bullet holes and all. Looks like a great course. I can see elements of Stoke Poges and Beaconsfield of old with a bit of Sunningdale New in there. And the greens are Wentworthish like #7 and the old second before they lost their sense of humour.


Great pictures. Why can't I be a multi millionaire... life is so unfair.

[Jeff Doerr]

Thanks for mentioning Stuart. His work has really brought out the great features of this course. The bunkering is so appealing. For some reason a lot of modern GCA can't seem to pull off a classic bunker style like this. Either they go ragged with broken edges, or they go perfect saucers, or the RTJ lobe look, or even the Engh things.

*** Question to all - what makes this look so appealing? ***


(I have my ideas, but would love to hear some others...)

[Steve Okula]

Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.