Golf de la Commanderie

Few departments in France reward the golf traveler quite like Ain, where the Dombes plateau's lakes and wetlands give way to the foothills of the Bugey and, eventually, the first serious ridges of the Jura. Golf de la Commanderie sits in this transitional landscape near Crottet, a quiet commune on the Saône plain just north of Mâcon — close enough to Burgundy that the cultural gravity of wine and gastronomy pulls at everything here.

The course takes its evocative name from the medieval commanderies of the Knights Hospitaller, whose agricultural estates once shaped the bocage farmland of southern Ain. That history gives the setting a depth that most modern parkland courses simply lack. Tree-lined fairways, water features fed by the region's abundant hydrology, and views toward the Beaujolais hills to the west combine to make a round feel genuinely rooted in its territory rather than imposed upon it.

As a club serving the Mâcon–Bourg-en-Bresse corridor, la Commanderie occupies a comfortable middle ground: serious enough in layout to reward careful course management, relaxed enough in atmosphere to suit the sociable, food-forward spirit that defines this particular corner of la France profonde.