American golf course architecture has been transformed in the twenty years since Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s design at Sand Hills in Nebraska made its debut. In recent years, the advance of the so-called ‘minimalists’ has been felt in the UK too, but, up to now, the movement has achieved little traction in continental Europe.

Some of Europe’s younger architects have been profoundly influenced by the courses of the ‘minimalist’ school, and their work is beginning to make an impact. Across the continent, though, the highest rated courses of the modern era – think Valderrama and PGA Catalunya in Spain, or Le Golf National and Les Bordes in France – tend to be what is described in Europe as ‘American-style’ with water hazards aplenty and a distinct nod to the Robert Trent Jones Sr school of design.

But maybe that is set to change. The aforementioned Coore built the Chateau course at Golf du Medoc outside Bordeaux some years ago, and recent investment in the course has seen it returned more closely to his vision. And on the other side of the city, outside the Right Bank wine town of Saint-Emilion, home to famous names like Cheval Blanc and Ausone, Doak and his team have just finished construction on their own first course in mainland Europe.

Technically, as developer André Mourgue d’Algue is happy to admit, the Domaine Golfique du Grand Saint-Emillionais is not actually in the Saint-Emilion wine region at all, but actually just across the commune line in the less exalted Côtes de Castillion. “Actually, that’s a good thing,” he smiles. “If the land was classified as Saint-Emilion it would’t have become a golf course at all – it would have been too expensive.”

The Mourgue d’Algue family has been promoting golf in France for decades. Paterfamilias Gaëtan – whose own father was a scratch player – took up golf aged eight, first represented France at 15 and was on several occasions the national amateur champion. His Swedish wife Cecilia also has many titles to her name, while daughter Kristel was NCAA champion in 1995, while on a golf scholarship in the US, and later played on the Ladies European Tour. Gaëtan launched the Trophée Lancôme in 1970, and a year later established the magazine Golf Européen. The Peugeot guide to European courses, more recently backed by Rolex and made global is another family business.

Gaëtan and André found the 252 acre Saint-Emilion site more than ten years ago, and have been trying to see it developed as a golf course ever since. After obtaining planning permission, and feeling that the project needed more heavy duty backing, they sold it to Canadian resort development firm Intrawest, but the global financial crisis, combined with a change of priorities back in Canada, meant little progress was made. Four years ago, then, André Mourgue d’Algue, says, he and his family bought back the project and resolved to go it alone and approached Doak to design the course.

Saint-Emilion is an intriguing project for Doak to have taken on. While the site is unarguably beautiful and the topography interesting it was not obviously destined to be a great golf course. The soils are heavy clay, and French environmental restrictions preclude any appropriation of water from the natural aquifers. Fortunately, much of the site drains into one central valley, where two interlinked lakes, one smaller and part of the course, one larger and barely visible from the golf holes, store water for irrigation purposes. This water storage will have to last through the summer, so the large lake is likely to be fairly low come early autumn; thus being able to keep it from golfers’ immediate view is a good thing. It will also force the greenkeepers to practice assiduously what André Mourgue d’Algue preaches, and keep the golf course as dry as possible. It is, he says, intended to be an island of British-style golf in the middle of France, and a message to the rest of French golf.

That’s a message that much of the French golf community needs. There seems to be – to this writer at least – a lack of understanding of the importance of fine grasses for classical style golf. Too many of the country’s finest courses are essentially all poa, and more than once I have been told, basically, that poa cannot be fought. Considering the sandy, seaside-y nature of many of those courses, I think this is a matter of some regret.

You get a pretty good impression of what to expect from Saint-Emilion just from the first hole, which heads downhilll from the old chateau that will be refurbished to become the clubhouse. It seems pretty benign at first, with lots of fairway and apparently few hazards. But, as is typical for a Doak course, the defence is concentrated at the green, which falls away from the line of play, and also has a pretty severe little plateau at the front. Many, perhaps even most modern architects – and quite a few classic-era ones – would have raised the back of the green significantly to give the golfer a sense of confidence; none of that here. Around the course, the greens, though not among Doak’s most severe, will come as a surprise to most French golfers, except perhaps those happy few who grew up playing Tom Simpson’s Vallière nine at Morfontaine outside Paris.

For all that, ‘subtle’ is a good word to describe the course. There are few features that will shock golfers, merely a very well routed walk across an interesting, contoured property with a great number of intriguing shots. Maybe the one real exception to that rule is at the green complex of the par five fifteenth. Doak and his crew are known for making their courses sit lightly on the natural environment, in keeping with the principles expressed by Alister MacKenzie. But here is something very different; the green is fronted by severe, sharp and obviously artificial mounding. I’m intrigued to know the inspiration for this feature. Is it the equally steep and artificial mounds that MacKenzie built around the eighth green at Augusta National, or has Doak pulled something else out of his mental databank of golf holes? Either way, it’s a reminder that all principles are subject to alteration when circumstances dictate, and certainly, in this heavy clay environment, where sand bunkers themselves are quite obviously artificial, it’s an unarguably effective and visually striking way of defending the green.

That said, the green of the par three fourteenth, set in a natural upslope and extravagantly contoured, will stick long in the memory too. As will the severe cross-bunker on the home hole, and the very long par three twelfth. Perhaps, then, I’m understating Saint-Emilion, but if I am, it is because it is a course that invites such understatement. It may not shock, but it will certainly entertain, and it will stand, I feel sure, as a testament to the Mourgue d’Algue family’s commitment to developing the game of golf in France.

This article first appeared in Golf Course Architecture - Issue 39