What’s it Like to Play Le Golf National? An Honest Review

Moving to France has improved our lives in pretty much every way I can think of, save for one: my golf game. Nearly five months passed by before I realized that I had not picked up a golf club since we moved here. 

Normally, this would have been a problem for someone as obsessed with the game as yours truly. 

We’d been so busy in France, though, that I had (mostly) not noticed until Agnes, sensing my restlessness and probably looking for a way to get me out of the house, came up with a great idea for my birthday in April. 

Her: Have you heard of Le Golf National? They played the 2018 Ryder Cup there.

Me: Oh, yeah. We got our butts kicked that year. Why? 

Her: They have a deal this spring and it is only 75€. Wanna go for your birthday?

Me: For real? 

Her: It’s also where they’ll play at the Olympics! 

Me: You had me at 75€.

(Friends, find yourself a partner as good as I did who always looks out for ways to get you out of the house…I mean, look out for your joys in life as much as theirs.) 

Thus began my first-ever European golf adventure on my 40-something-ith trip around the sun. 

How was it, you ask? Well, let’s check out my review below to see if the course made me lose as many balls as the United States team did in 2018!

Where is Le Golf National?

Le Golf National is near Paris. (That’s why it was used during the 2024 Olympics.) It’s about 25 miles southwest of the city center, or 40 km for the rest of the world.

Here’s their address to enter in your preferred map app: 2 Avenue du Golf, 78280, Guyancourt, France.

If you believe the reviews on the interwebs, the course is located “right in the shadow of Versailles” or some cliché like that.

I guess this is true if you think “shadow” means a 20-minute drive from the chateau, and also being like the fourth closest course to the famous palace.

I digress. 

There are three courses at Le Golf National. The Albatros and The Aigle (Eagle) are both full 18-hole courses, and the Oiselet (Birdie) is a short 9-hole par 32. 

A Brief History of the Albatros Course

The Albatros course at Le Golf National was designed specifically to host major tournaments by architects Hubert Chesneau, American Robert von Hagge, and Pierre Thevenin.

After three years of construction, it was completed in 1990. 

Hosting major tournaments has been a thing at the highly-rated course ever since, being the site of the Open de France (the French Open) on the European Tour since 1991, the Ryder Cup in 2018, and the Olympics in 2024.  

Le Golf National also hosted the World Amateur Team Championships for men and women, the Eisenhower Trophy, and the Espirito Santo Trophy in 1994 and 2022.

Wikipedia tells me they can host 80,000 spectators, but judging from the heckling the Americans received during the Ryder Cup, that feels understated. 

They were preparing the grandstands for the Olympics already during my trip, so I got to pretend people were cheering me on.

How to Get to Le Golf National

Of the two major Paris airports, Orly Airport is closer than Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. Sorry, Ryanair, Beauvais is NOT in Paris.

We moved to France sans automobile, so I did what most millennials have done for the past decade: order an Uber.

It was about 25 euros from Saint-Germain-en-Laye, our home base, so I’d imagine it wouldn’t be much different from your posh hotel in Paris. 

If you are fancier than me and have a rental car, plan for at least 45 minutes from Paris, depending on traffic and where you are staying.

READ MORE: Yep, we moved to France. Here’s more on the why and how!

You want to get there early anyway to take pictures of the pain (or joy if you are from Europe) of the Ryder Cup and practice a little bit. 

Enter that address in your preferred GPS or map app, and take the planned route it tells you. You might go through tolls around the city, but they are easy to pay via credit card. 

Note: Make sure not to go more than 6 km over the speed limit anywhere or the speed cameras WILL get you. I’m still waiting for mine that one time I took a wrong turn and went too fast down the hill. 

If either of these options doesn’t suffice, you can take public transportation if you are willing to schlep your clubs onto a RER train, then a bus, and then walk 5-10 minutes.

Times will vary by your location, but plan on at least an hour to an hour and a half for this route. 

Who Can Play at Le Golf National

Golf at Le Golf National is open to the public. They have tee times available to book on their website.

The website says there is a handicap limit of 28 to play the Albatros course. I’ll be honest, the two players in front of me definitely were not that. 

Arriving at Le Golf National

Ok, ok, I’m there. Now what? 

If you’re driving yourself, follow the signs wrapping around the clubhouse to the parking lot. From there, walk past the practice areas and enter the clubhouse from the rear. 

If you are using public transit or taking an Uber, you’ll enter from the front. You can walk through the lobby, which gets you out to the same practice area as above.

Don’t feel weird about walking through this area with clubs in tow. 

Set your clubs down, and head back in to check in at the pro shop, admiring the European Ryder Cup items along the way. If you need a change or a restroom, the locker rooms are located down the stairs. 

Fun fact: In my experience, the French know a lot more English than they let on. That still doesn’t mean it isn’t polite to enter with a “Bonjour” before you ask either “Do you speak English?” or, if you are a solid individual, “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

They’ll then nod, and you can get your ticket for the driving range, which is included with the round, of course. On this day, they made sure to remind me that the price of 75 euros was because the greens had been recently aerated.

“Merci,” I said, as I walked to the practice area.

Unfortunately for me, the practice area was leaving much to be desired. The driving range is off mats, and the putting green is also artificial turf.

You’re still golfing in France, though, so keep an open mind. 

READ MORE: I get to play golf at some incredible courses. Check out my review of Colorado’s RainDance National.

Finally, the Hole-by-Hole Review!

After you get that practice sesh in, you are now ready to head to the starter’s tee. They have carts available for an extra fee, or a free pull cart if you wish to walk.

I like to walk, so I grabbed that cheapo pull cart and made my way around the newly constructed grandstand to the starters’ table to say my bonjours one more time. 

“Ah, you live in Saint-Germain-en-Laye,” the starter said to me, unimpressed by my broken French. 

“Yes, I am so excited, but it’s my first time playing in months.”

“Hahaha, good luck, monsieur.”

Feeling a little less confident, I headed to the first tee by myself.

Note: Since it was off-season and they recently aerated the greens, the course was not full on this weekday. 

They had some sort of handicap chart at the starters’ booth, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I looked at the scorecard and decided to give myself a break and play the yellow tees at 5,845 meters.

This is still no joke at almost 6,400 yards.  

I walked down to the first tee, imagining the heckling from European Ryder Cup fans. (“USA! USA!” I chanted in my head to motivate myself.) 

It’s hard to see in the photo of hole 1 above, but the water was not much further than the cart in the fairway. There will be stands eventually to the right and left of the picture.

The first tee is quite breathtaking. It looked like a blend of links and water hazard, but with a “Ryder Cup 2018” sign there to humble brag about. 

From the yellow tees, it was only playing about 350 yards. The difficulty is deceiving, though, as the water hazard comes into play if you hit the driver and go too far left off the tee box. 

By “left” I mean pretty much exactly at the cart in the middle of the fairway in the picture above.

“I probably should hit a hybrid,” I said to myself before pulling out a driver anyway and aiming down the right side of the hole.

With nobody watching, I hit that darn thing exactly as I intended and landed about 80 yards short of the green in the rough, which was not yet grown out where I landed.

I proceeded to fist-bump to no one in particular.  

My rust showed up on the next shot, though, as I hit my approach short and failed to get up and down for par. This began a theme to start my day for the first few holes, one stellar shot per hole, followed by mediocrity. 

Hole 2 was just as spectacular as the first. It was a daunting par 3 with a carry required over the water you just walked by on hole 1. I pulled out my 6-iron and smacked it into the wind onto the green.

Sadly, I didn’t hit the part of the green where the flag is, but still made it to the green. I took three putts from what seemed like 200 feet and walked on to hole 3, not before turning back and watching the group behind me on hole 1 hit into the water. Suckers. 

The pin was on the far right of the green on this day, while my tee shot went on the far left. C’est la vie.

Hole 3 is a par 5, with water in play on both the tee shot and layup. I hit my tee shot into the rough on the left, and then took a massive swipe to move the ball forward only 90 yards, leading to my third straight bogey. 

The rough was brutal, y’all. 

Now…I’ve played the rough at Torrey Pines the day after the Farmers tournament, so I understand how penalizing high rough can be. Apologies for the humble brag here.

This rough was just different. I quickly learned to just take no more than an 8- or 9-iron and play it like a bunker shot to get it to go more than 50 yards. 

No wonder we lost the Ryder Cup so badly. 

Undeterred by three straight bogeys, I moved on to what is the first of four straight par 4s. Thankfully, there was no water on these, but there were plenty of bunkers. I somehow managed to find them on three straight holes, leading to three more bogeys.

I told you there was a trend to start.

After six straight bogeys, I reached the second hardest hole on the course, hole 7. I see why it’s hard, as you hit an elevated fairway that ends both if you hit it too long and too far right. High rough also taunts you if you go too far left. 

Naturally, I hit the middle of the fairway and then my approach to six feet only to miss that putt for my first par of the day. If you’ve played on aerated greens, you know how hard it is to make putts on sanded and bumpy greens, so I don’t fret about it too much. 

This gets me going, though, as I par the next hole (hole 8, a par 3 downhill) before I ran into the slowest group of all time on hole 9. (The cart on hole 1 had let me pass on hole 6.)

I waited for like 15 minutes for the threesome to get out of my range on the par 5 and promptly pulled my tee shot into the water for my first lost ball. Thankfully, it wasn’t too long of a par 5, so I took my drop and ended up making a respectable bogey. 

I made the turn with a crowd-pleasing 43 and with no sausage roll because there wasn’t a halfway house anywhere within sight. I’m not complaining, but I’m really glad I brought a sandwich and snacks with me on this trip. 

The threesome in front of me turned into a twosome as one guy was fed up with how slow the other two were playing. They still don’t let me pass ahead or join, though. Sadly, they also don’t pick up their pace.

On the back nine, I started with (you guessed it) more water on holes 10 and 11, but somehow both the slow players in front of me and the water did not bother me as I finished with par on both. 

Hole 12 came with no water, but also with no par from me as I made another stupid bogey from the fairway bunker. Golf is hard.

The water returned on the par 4 hole 13, and unfortunately, so did my ability to lose golf balls. I hit my tee shot into the water, then, after taking a penalty stroke, hit my next one into the water in front of the green as well.

The course was surprisingly void of trees until this hole, where they fooled me into thinking I was not playing into the wind.

However, because the golf gods were being nice to me, I promptly chipped my fifth shot into the hole from 45 yards out for a miraculous bogey.

The workers setting up more grandstands nearby didn’t cheer nearly as much as I hoped they would, so I did another self-fist bump.

Hole 14 was a relatively easy par 5 that I almost both birdied and hit into the slow group in front of me because I lost track of one of the guys in front of me. Whoops! 

I then came up to the hardest hole of the course, the par 4 hole 15. It was playing downwind, so that let my tee shot get close enough that I could hit a short iron into the green.

I managed to hit that shot over the water and within 20 feet for another birdie chance.

I gave the group in front of me a passive-aggressive stare as I set my clubs down in front of hole 16 and walked over the bridge to read my third birdie putt of the day. 

It just missed. I cursed the same golf gods that just helped me on hole 13, and tried the putt over five or six more times because the group in front was still on the tee box of hole 16 for some reason. 

Fun fact: I still parred the hardest hole, I say to myself, the only person who will listen. 

It was fun coming up to every tee box with the group in front of me still there. At least they didn’t have to wait for anyone all day.

I chipped and put on hole 15 green long enough for the slow players to clear and then stuck my wedge to 15 feet on hole 16. It led to another par, and I then moved to what I thought was harder than hole 15. 

Hole 16 was short, but again, all over water.

Hole 17 was the longest par 4 from the yellow tees. In fact, it is only a few yards shorter than hole 18, which is a par 5. There’s no water, but again, there’s no par for me as I card another bogey. 

Still in good spirits, I made the walk over to hole 18. It was a par 4 for the pros but a par 5 for the amateurs, and I can see why. The pros hit from much further back, but are also elevated, so it probably doesn’t play as long for them as you think. 

Unfortunately, after another what seemed like a 15-minute wait, I hit my tee shot into the water on the left and had to lay up on my next approach. If I could get up and down, I could manage a par, but failed and carded one last bogey for the day.

If you were keeping score at home, the back nine overall went much better than the front as I shot a respectable 39 for a total of 82. Even when I play once or twice a week I would have been happy with that, to be honest. 

I considered this appropriate revenge for the Ryder Cup loss and made my way to the Uber I called to take me back home. 

Where to Stay Near Le Golf National

There is a Novotel Saint-Quentin en Yvelines right next door if you are interested in spending the dough for a four-star hotel.

If you’re going just for a golf break, this is probably good, but if you want to see other things in Paris, I would suggest staying in Paris instead. 

Take a look at the map below to start filtering through your options in Paris:

Is Le Golf National worth playing?

Le Golf National is worth putting on your golf course bucket list. The price is reasonable compared to other famous golf courses, even when not on aerated greens.

I always love going to a place that has this much recent history, too. 

I can definitely see why we got smoked in the Ryder Cup, though. The course is not long by modern standards, being only 7,300 yards from the pro tees, but the rough is very unforgiving.

Also, being mostly a links-style course, the wind can be a major factor in pushing wayward shots into the water. 

I felt that the Ryder Cup venue was difficult but fair. Some negatives were a lack of amenities like a halfway house or water to drink along the course. For me, the push to walk the course is a plus, but that is a negative for many others. 

Overall, I’d give this course the silver medal.  Definitely check it out for yourself for your own rating and hit me up to join your group!

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