Golf Club Rapallo

The club admits that length is not the course’s strong point: the par 70 with just two par 5s says as much. The difficulty lies elsewhere: small greens guarded by numerous bunkers, narrow fairways and dense vegetation on either side that makes even the tee shot treacherous. The course record is still 63. Adding up the published distances for the back tees, the course measures about 5,540 metres over 45 hectares, in the middle of the town.

The first nine holes are the historic ones of 1929, designed by the engineer Maffei; the other nine, by the architect Migliorini, date from the late 1960s and feature the Valle Christi monastery and the two dog-legs on the 10th and 11th. In the 1990s Cabell B. Robinson touched up several holes (including 7, 13 and 16), while holes 5 and 6 were more recently redesigned by Costantino Rocca to a plan by Fulvio Bani.

Three holes worth remembering. The 7th, a 416-metre par 5 from the back tees, has the thirteenth-century Romanesque monastery behind the green and a water hazard about 260 metres from the tee. The 8th, a stroke index 1 par 4, is a right-hand dog-leg with an elevated green: you can only reach it from the left side of the fairway. The 16th, a Robinson par 4, has a stream cutting across the fairway twice, the second time below the green. The 18th closes the round, a 214-metre par 3 that crosses the driving range.

The club is open all year from 7:30 am, except non-holiday Tuesdays. The price list published on the website does not state the year it applies to (it only notes that the rates exclude August), so it is worth confirming with the secretary’s office. For FIG members, 18 holes cost €60 on weekdays and €95 on public holidays and weekends, €45 on weekdays before 9:30 am and in the afternoon, and €70 on holiday afternoons. With a foreign card: €70 and €115. Juniors get 50 per cent off.

A golf cart costs €55 for 18 holes, an electric trolley €15 (€23 for foreign cards), a rental bag €40; the practice area is €15 on weekdays and €20 on holidays. Booking is online at prenota.golfetennisrapallo.it.

The dress code is precise: on the course, blue jeans, tracksuits, non-sporting shorts, T-shirts, tank tops, Crocs, flip-flops and slippers are not allowed.

The project began in 1929, when the Azienda Autonoma di Soggiorno, the local tourist board, started work on five tennis courts and a nine-hole golf course along the Boate, among beeches and chestnut trees; the club recalls that golf has been played at Rapallo all year round since the spring of 1933. In 1970 the extension to 18 holes began, with the reclamation of marshy land and even the diversion of the Boate: by the winter of 1971 the course was already hosting golfers from all over the world. Among its visitors the club names the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marconi, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope and, more recently, Bill Gates. A fire in 1987 damaged the clubhouse, which was rebuilt faithfully to its original design. Today the complex is owned by the Liguria Region.

The restaurant has a terrace covered like a winter garden and serves Ligurian and Italian cuisine, with scampi and prawns from Santa Margherita Ligure and Alba truffles. For practice there is the driving range with 12 covered and 10 open-air bays, and a putting green; four professionals from the National School coach players, and there is a junior school.

• A stream moved. For the 1970 extension the Boate was diverted; at the 4th hole it runs to the right of the tee and marks the out of bounds.
• A botanical course. In 2014 the club received an award for Landscape and Arboretum Care; the trees include acacias, lime trees, eucalyptus, plane trees and palms.
• Herons in the cedars. Grey herons often perch on the cedars of Lebanon at the 3rd hole; the club even has a birdwatching page.
• A record stuck at 63. With small greens and bunkers, the club notes that no one has ever gone below that score.