Le Prieuré (Ouest)

Overview: The Ouest course at Le Prieuré is set in the Vexin landscape west of Paris, where gentle slopes, fields and woodland frame a traditional parkland routing. The course is part of a 36-hole club whose two courses sit on either side of the road toward Normandy. Its playing character is shaped by the land’s natural folds and by Hawtree’s use of trees, bunkers and changing lies, creating a round that rewards placement and imagination more than a single style of shot.

History: The club’s sporting association was created in 1963, and Fred Hawtree was engaged to remodel the former agricultural fields into two courses, East and West. The Ouest profile is dated 1964 in the course record, representing the early playing era of the West routing. The club house is the former Prieuré de Montcient-Fontaine, a building whose documented history reaches back to the twelfth century and which survived the fighting around the Vexin in 1944.

Did You Know? The club identifies its former priory building as dating from around 1180 and uses it as the club house. On the West course, one of the depressions left by wartime shelling was retained rather than completely filled, leaving a physical trace of the site’s history within the golf landscape.