The anatomy of a French golf course: what 469 scorecards say

Ask what a "normal" golf course looks like and you get a shape rather than numbers: four par-3s, four par-5s, par 72, two balanced nines. The sketch is convenient. It is also wrong roughly half the time.

We counted. Every French 18-hole scorecard in the FlyAway course directory, broken down hole by hole. And the first thing the count turned up was not a statistic — it was a trap.

First, throw out the fake 18-hole courses

Of the 518 French cards filed as 18 holes, 49 are a 9-hole course played twice. Holes 10 to 18 repeat holes 1 to 9 in the same order with the same pars — and, on checking, with the same distances to the metre. Golf du Mont-Dore, Avoriaz, Valberg, Saumur, La Rochelle Sud: nine holes on the ground, eighteen on the card.

This is not a database glitch, it is an entirely legitimate club practice — play the nine twice, hand in a card of 18. But for counting it is a trap, and a directional one. A doubled nine is balanced by construction: its front and back must carry the same par. Keeping them in pushed the share of balanced courses up to 54.6%, and that majority was an artefact.

With the 49 removed, 469 genuine 18-hole courses across 423 clubs remain. Everything below is about those.

What a French course is made of

A French 18-hole course carries an average of 4.43 par-3s, 9.68 par-4s and 3.89 par-5s.

The average hides the point. The canonical layout — four par-3s, ten par-4s, four par-5s — appears on 211 courses, or 45%. It is by far the most common single configuration, and it is still a minority: one French course in two departs from the template.

The departures do not lean the same way on both sides. Par-3s spill upward: 293 courses carry four, but 126 carry five, 33 carry six, and seven courses carry seven — Teynac, Gonville, Coutainville, Cabourg Le Home, Céron. In the other direction the margin is far tighter: no French course drops below three par-3s, and only ten sit at that floor. Golf de Chantilly is among them, its Vineuil course allowing itself just three short holes for a par of 73.

Par-5s hold their line: 275 courses carry exactly four. When they deviate it is usually downward — 28 courses carry only two, among them Tumulus at Tarbes, Val de Cher and Sainte-Victoire, all par 70.

Par 72 is a majority, not a rule

Total par	Courses	Share
68	17	3.6%
69	14	3.0%
70	43	9.2%
71	96	20.5%
72	262	55.9%
73	35	7.5%
74	2	0.4%

Par 72 takes 55.9%. Put the other way: more than four French courses in ten are not par 72, and one in five is a par 71 — which surprises a lot of golfers, because a par 71 club never advertises it.

Par 72 dominates by arithmetic rather than tradition. Four par-3s below par, four par-5s above, ten par-4s in between: it all cancels, and the total halves cleanly into two nines of 36. An architect chasing a balanced routing arrives there without aiming at it.

At the extremes, only two courses reach par 74: Mérignies in the north, on its Marque-Rupilly combination, and Crécy Golf Club in Seine-et-Marne.

The seventeen par 68s say something more interesting. Mountain courses are there — Montgenèvre, Lac de Tignes — but so are the oldest ones: Dinard, laid out in 1887, and Valescure, in 1895. Two cases, one cause. Where the land dictates, whether by slope or by coastline, the par-5s go first: Valescure and Dinard keep a single one each, replaced by short holes. The par was not aimed at, it was observed — exactly what turns up again in Scotland further down.

Where the par-3s and par-5s actually sit

This is where the received shape cracks. Par is not spread evenly around the loop: the first and last holes obey different rules from everything between them.

Hole	Par 3	Par 4	Par 5
1	4%	75%	22%
9	15%	57%	28%
10	19%	61%	20%
18	11%	55%	33%
Middle of the round	~28%	~52%	~20%

The 1st hole is a par 4 three times out of four, and almost never a par 3: 4%, against 28% for a hole in the middle of the round. The reason is practical before it is aesthetic — on an opening par 3 every group has to wait for the one ahead to putt out, and the queue propagates through the whole course. Only eighteen French courses open that way, nearly all of them hemmed in by their site: Rochefort Océan, Lac de Tignes, Fréhel, Divonne.

The 18th is the par-5 hole. At 33% it is the most likely par 5 on any French course, thirteen points above the mid-round baseline, and simultaneously the least likely par 3 at 11%. The closing hole is built so a match can turn on the last swing: reachable in two, an eagle on the table, a birdie common.

The 9th behaves like a junior 18th — 28% par 5 — which is what a routing that has to return players to the clubhouse twice will produce.

Out and in: less balanced than you think

234 courses of 469, or 49.9%, carry the same par on the front and the back. Slightly fewer than one in two — not the comfortable majority the raw figure suggested before the doubled nines came out.

Where the halves differ, they differ without preference: 114 courses play a heavier front nine, 121 a heavier back nine. Nationally the averages land at 35.71 and 35.75, four hundredths of a stroke apart. The balance exists at the level of the country; it does not exist on your card.

In practice: if you are playing a par 71, there is a coin-flip chance one of your nines is a 35 and the other a 36. Worth knowing which before you bet the front.

The only par 6 in France

One French hole, and only one, is neither a par 3, a par 4 nor a par 5: the 18th at Golf de Seignosse in the Landes, laid out by Robert von Hagge in 1989.

It is a par 6 of 666 metres from the black tees, 635 from the whites, 561 from the yellows. The figure is not a data-entry slip, and the card proves it unaided: Seignosse's two par-5s measure 444 and 496 metres from the same tee. The 18th is 170 metres longer than the longest par 5 on the course. At that distance a third shot to reach the green stops being an accident and becomes the plan.

Across the 8,442 holes that make up the 469 courses studied, it is the only one of its kind.

France against the rest

The same count, with the same exclusions, run on other national course sets.

Country	Courses	Average par	Par 72	Par-3s per card	Par-5s per card
Japan	2,028	71.96	95%	4.05	4.00
Germany	621	71.65	57%	4.31	3.96
Spain	322	71.57	63%	4.42	3.98
United States	11,669	71.52	61%	4.24	3.75
France	469	71.46	56%	4.43	3.89
England	1,369	70.99	26%	4.27	3.26
Scotland	320	70.51	16%	4.15	2.66

Two countries stand apart, in opposite directions.

Japan builds to a template. 95% par 72, and exactly 4.00 par-5s per card on average. That is not a distribution, it is a specification — the signature of a course stock built fast, mostly between the 1960s and the 1990s, to one plan.

Scotland barely plays the same game. 16% par 72, 2.66 par-5s per card, average par 70.51. Links were laid out among the dunes long before par existed as a concept: nobody was aiming at a total. A century and a half later the arithmetic still remembers. England, at 26%, sits between the two traditions.

France lands mid-table on nearly everything, with one singularity: it carries more par-3s per card than any other country in the table, 4.43. Half a short hole more than Japan, every round.

What this count does not tell you

Par is a declared figure. It comes from the club's official card, which is authoritative — but it says nothing about real difficulty, length or elevation. A 480-metre par 5 and a 400-metre par 4 can be the same hole with a different number printed beside it. Seignosse is the exception that confirms it: there, the number really does follow the distance.

Two exclusions shape everything above. Compact and pitch-and-putt layouts filed as "18 holes" are removed by a par floor of 68 — without it, a par-54 layout of 948 metres would sit in the same table as a championship course. And the 49 doubled nines are removed for the reason set out at the top.

Method

Source: the FlyAway production database, 17 August 2026. Scope: French courses not deleted; non-archived scorecards; grids of 18 par values summing to 68 or more; cards whose holes 10–18 repeat holes 1–9 excluded. That leaves 469 courses across 423 clubs. Percentages are shares of those 469 unless stated otherwise, and the international table applies exactly the same filters country by country.

Every course counted here has its own page, with the full card hole by hole, in the French course directory. If you would rather ask than read a table, the AI golf assistant works from the same data.