Destination Royan Atlantique offers 2 landscaped courses under the pines and bordered by the sea and the beaches. The perfect opportunity to learn or improve your swing in the heart of nature! Close-up on the Royan golf course and La Palmyre golf course.
Royan, golf destination
For more than 40 years, Royan has offered a course laid out in the Combots d'Ansoine forest, at the edge of beaches. Hole n°14 is unquestionably the jewel of the golf course. Golf of Royan. Its drop of 50 meters and its maritime background cut out by the tops of the pines make it possible to distinguish the silhouette of the Cordouan lighthouse. Beyond the painting, the plunging and hilly lines of the landscape draw one of the most formidable stages of the course. The most knowledgeable practitioners will tell you! This visual and technical highlight alone sums up the charm of this natural setting.
Royan golf course, In the 30 best French golf courses
It is here, at Maine Gaudin, that Royan inaugurated its golf course in 1977. After a hiatus of 30 years, the town set up its new playground on an 84-hectare natural site granted by the Office National des Forêts. It is located by the sea in Saint-Palais-sur-Mer, on a site shaped by the wind and the sands. It is not a "links*" strictly speaking, but a forest trail, went from 9 to 18 holes in 1987, the first of its kind in Charente-Maritime.
*The term is used to name the golf courses located by the sea, generally made up of sandy soil, and strongly affected by the wind.
Proof of its national appeal, equipment from Charente is making a sensational debut in 2020 in the Top 30 Best Golf Courses. Established by Fairways magazine, this benchmark ranking is established by the players in the discipline. In their note, the voters salute "the beauty of the place, associated with its technical relevance". Golf owes these two qualities to its wooded and maritime environment conducive to the deployment of a course punctuated by a variety of configurations. In particular, there are dog legs* at holes 6, 9 and 13. A series of topographic features also lead players to try, here and there, shots on a slope (cant) or blind.
*Holes invisible from the teeing ground due to the curved trajectory of the fairway.
A Clubhouse area
Another positive point has undoubtedly contributed to raising the price of the golf course on the Arvert Peninsula. Beautification work undertaken over the past ten years has made it possible to flatten and enlarge the starting areas, modernize the watering system and improve the practicability of the paths. Extensive program crowned by the commissioning in 2017 of a new space club house, flanked by a a terrace of 200 sqm. 40 years after the opening of the site and almost a century after the introduction of this British game in the department, the symbol was strong.
In Royan, the practice of golf dates back well before 1977. It dates back to the Roaring Twenties. At that time, the beach tourism is booming. The Charente resort then seeks to complete its seaside offer with cultural and sports activities capable of attracting a fashionable clientele that is still in the majority.
A sport imported by the British
A first course had been laid out first in Breuillet, at the exit of Royan. It was on an area of about fifty hectares, adjoining the area of the current castle of Taupignac. The initiative came from the company “Golf de Royan” made up in particular of Count Gabriel Espierre and a Royan engineer from Arts and Manufactures, Daniel Hedde.
Their aim was to raise funds to develop an 18-hole course, a goal achieved in 1927. The site had first opened in 1925 with an unfinished 9-hole course. For the promoters of this outdoor sport, the issue was clearly economic.
In France, the first 19-hole course was created in 1856 in Pau, a popular vacation spot for the British who had set up a club house there at that time. Biarritz followed in 1888, then Cannes (1891), Saint-Malo (1893), Deauville (1899). In Charente-Maritime, the Taupignac site, destroyed by the 1945 bombings, was definitively closed in 1947.
A second golf course at La Palmyre
In the 2000s, a field of 9 hole golf course settled in the commune of Mathes – La Palmyre. It is located near the Club Med in the middle of pines on a slightly hilly site lined with contemporary villas. The sumptuous route runs along the seafront (promenade of the two lighthouses) and offers breathtaking views of the ocean. Its holes 6 and 7 merge into a frame enhanced by the La Palmyre beach, Close.
Un clubhouse design, appreciated for its cool and shaded terrace overlooking the putting green, completes the Rhino's Course. The equipment also offers a Pro Shop and training and initiation areas (25 practice posts and 5 greens).
Themes
