Golf de Gassin

Few courses anywhere in France command a setting quite like this one. Golf de Gassin sits high in the Maures massif above the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, and the views across the Mediterranean — on a clear morning, Corsica is visible on the horizon — are frankly difficult to concentrate through. The course was designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr., whose fingerprints are all over the French Riviera's most prestigious layouts, and it opened in the 1990s as a destination-caliber club serving one of Europe's most glamorous coastlines. The terrain is rugged and Mediterranean in character: cork oaks, stone pines, and maritime scrub frame nearly every hole, and the elevation changes are genuine, not decorative.

Gassin itself is one of the most beautiful hilltop villages in Provence, and the golf sits within that same dramatic topography — fairways dropping away toward the sea, approach shots played against sky and water rather than treelines.

The experience here is unambiguously resort and second-home in flavor, attracting a well-traveled international clientele. Expect firm summer turf, reliable Riviera sunshine, and the persistent sense that you're playing somewhere quite unlike anywhere else.