Golf de Misery

Few French golf courses carry a name as arresting as Golf de Misery — a designation that comes not from any hardship on the course itself but from the ancient hamlet of Misery, a lieu-dit in the Yonne countryside whose name predates any association with bogeys and lost balls. The course sits in Burgundy's quieter northern reaches, a region more celebrated for its Chablis vineyards than its fairways, where the landscape rolls gently through cereal fields and woodland typical of the Yonne valley.

The Yonne département sits at a kind of crossroads between the Paris basin and deeper Burgundy, and Crain itself is a small rural commune not far from Auxerre. Golf here is decidedly a local affair — a club rooted in the community rather than positioned as a destination resort, offering members and visitors a genuinely pastoral setting far removed from the manicured grandeur of the grandes régions golfiques.

Playing in this part of France means contending with classic northern Burgundian conditions: exposed plateaux, occasional winds off the valley, and a course that rewards local knowledge over raw power.