France's nine-hole courses: 133 clubs, and half the cards are not nines

A third of French golf is played over nine holes. The rankings only ever discuss eighteen.

Here is the count of France's nine-hole courses. It began with a discovery that changes everything: half the nine-hole cards are not nine-hole courses.

Half the nine-hole cards are not nines

The database holds 451 French nine-hole cards. Comparing each against the eighteen-hole cards at the same club, 227 of them — 50.3% — reproduce exactly the first or second half of an eighteen, hole for hole, par for par.

These are not errors. An eighteen-hole club routinely publishes an "out" or "in" card for members playing a partial round. But they are not nine-hole courses: they are an eighteen played halfway, and counting them would rank the same ground twice.

Once removed, 224 standalone nine-hole cards remain, across 213 courses. And among those, 133 clubs hold no eighteen-hole card at all: the genuine French nines, where the nine is the course rather than a half of one.

A quarter are entirely par 3

This is the format's defining trait, and it appears nowhere else in French golf.

Total par	Cards	Share
27	60	26.8%
28–31	45	20.1%
32–34	46	20.5%
35	30	13.4%
36	39	17.4%
37	4	1.8%

Sixty French cards are par 27: nine holes, nine par 3s. More than one standalone nine in four. The format is called pitch and putt, and it has a geometry of its own — the 999 hole distances recorded on those courses have a median of 77 metres, ranging from 26 to 270.

A few of them:

• 938 m — Public Golf Three Valleys CAPI, Isère
• 910 m — Golf Du Totche, Occitanie
• 840 m — Golf Mini-Golf Du Baganais, whose name misleads: its holes run from 53 to 146 metres, it is a real course
• 698 m — Golf des Abymes, Guadeloupe
• 696 m — Golf du Havre, Normandy
• 587 m — Golf de la Bretesche, Pays de la Loire

Par 27 is golf's entry format: an hour of play, every shot below a 7-iron, no need to know how to drive. That it accounts for a quarter of France's nines says a great deal about what this part of the country's golf is actually for.

The ten longest nines

Excluding par 27s, a French nine measures 2,450 metres at the median.

#	Length	Par	Course
1	3,264 m	36	Golf des Aisses, Loiret
2	3,210 m	36	Lacanau La Méjanne, Gironde
3	3,184 m	37	Golf de Caen la Mer, Calvados
4	3,177 m	36	Domaine Nitot, Nouvelle-Aquitaine
5	3,131 m	37	Center Parcs Bois-Francs, Eure
6	3,089 m	37	Golf du Pic Saint-Loup, Hérault
7	3,068 m	36	Golf du Bois Chenu, PACA
8	3,045 m	35	Golf de Rochebois, Dordogne
9	3,043 m	36	Golf de la Bosse, Centre-Val de Loire
10	3,040 m	35	Golf du Senonais, Yonne

Les Aisses is the only French club appearing in both the top 20 longest eighteens and the top 10 longest nines: its big course is the country's 4th longest, its nine is 1st.

Three cards carry a par 37, a figure impossible on a conventional half-course: they hold five or more par 5s across nine holes.

A nine is not half an eighteen

This is the count's most useful result, and it settles a question players ask regularly.

The median French eighteen measures 5,943 metres. Half of that would be 2,971 metres. The median standalone nine measures 2,450.

A standalone nine is therefore 17% shorter than half an eighteen. It is not an eighteen cut in two: it is a format of its own, laid out on less ground, with shorter holes on average — a gap the 60 par 27s widen further still.

Elevation, by contrast, stays proportional. A nine carries 23 metres of in-play elevation at the median against 89 for an eighteen. A little over half, for half the holes: relief does not compress.

The steepest nines

In-play elevation	Course
190 m	Montgenèvre, Hautes-Alpes
172 m	Savignoux Puy d'Arnac, Corrèze
171 m	Golf La Rosière, Savoie
148 m	Golf du Pic Saint-Loup, Hérault
140 m	Golf des Roucous, Tarn-et-Garonne

Montgenèvre posts 190 metres across nine holes — more than 86.8% of French eighteens, whose median sits at 89 metres. At 1,860 metres of altitude the ground offers no alternative.

Method

Source: the FlyAway production database, 17 August 2026. Scope: French courses not deleted, non-archived cards, grids of exactly 9 par values.

The 227 cards reproducing half of an eighteen at the same club are excluded, by strict comparison of the par sequence against the first nine and last nine holes of every eighteen-hole card at that course. That leaves 224 standalone cards across 213 courses.

Lengths are measured off the furthest back tee on each card, and the length ranking excludes par 27s, whose format does not compare. Elevation follows the same definition as our steepest courses ranking: tee-to-green change, climbs and descents in absolute terms, transfers between holes excluded.

Every course named has its own page in the French course directory.