Golf Sainte-Baume

Golf Sainte Baume: Nestling in a valley alongside the Domaine de Triennes vineyards, Sainte Baume offers an enjoyable golf outing in a natural and wonderfully rural setting. All around the wooded Provencal hills provide a scenic backdrop. A spectacular limestone mountain ridge, part of the Massif de la Sainte Baume, rises up to the south, reaching a height of over 1,100 metres (3,600 feet). A much smaller ridge runs across the golf course itself, ensuring this well-maintained layout contains plenty of undulation, with several testingly elevated tees and greens.

At times relatively open, at others more tree-lined, the course lays down an array of golfing challenges as it sweeps around the largely hidden Hotel du Domaine de Chateauneuf. Care will be needed on five or six holes where water threatens alongside the greens. There are one or two blind drives to make, most especially at the par-5 15th, which is played up and over the ridge. At the equally challenging par-5 12th the demand is for a well struck drive from a gloriously elevated tee box.

The greens here are often large and sloping, with the bunkering occasionally set too far back to be a real threat, unless your approaches are seriously offline. The clockwise back-nine is arguably stronger than the anti-clockwise front-nine, although both are flanked by picturesque countryside, and both enjoy their share of the best holes. The double dog-legging par-5 7th and well-bunkered downhill par-3 16th are two of the most memorable.