La Boulie (La Vallée)

Overview: La Vallée at the Racing Club de France La Boulie is an historic 18-hole parkland course in Jouy-en-Josas, close to Versailles. Willie Park Jr. shaped the original routing around the site's natural valley and rolling ground, producing a course whose interest comes from changing lies, mature trees and the way the holes follow the land. The official course listing gives La Vallée a par of 72 and a length of 5,918 metres. It is a strategic rather than theatrical test, with fairway position influencing the angle into greens and the surrounding topography repeatedly changing the player's stance. The course's long association with French golf gives the setting a particular weight, but the architecture remains the reason the round is still so engaging.

History: The story of La Boulie began in 1901 when Pierre Deschamps and his associates created the Golf de Paris society and acquired the site. The initial course drawing was entrusted to Willie Park Jr., who had become a major European architect after his professional career. The club and course suffered serious disruption during the Second World War. The La Vallée routing was then restored, slightly corrected and embellished for its return in 1952. That layered history explains the profile today: an early Park design, a historic Paris-area club, and a post-war course that returned to play while retaining the identity of the original valley setting.

Did You Know? Willie Park Jr. designed more than 170 courses in Europe after winning the Open Championship twice. La Vallée is part of that wider architectural legacy, but it is especially interesting because the design was created for the first Paris golf site and still expresses the valley's natural movement rather than relying on artificial spectacle.