Is Arenas Golf & Country Club

The layout bears the signature of Robert von Hagge's firm, with Smelek & Baril: par 72, 6,317 metres from the championship tees, 5,947 from the yellows. Every hole runs along a corridor of pines and junipers inside the forest, and the scenery changes from one to the next. The hardest by stroke index is the 14th, a 422-metre par 4; the back nine opens with the 10th, a 547-metre par 5, the longest hole on the course.

The club cites several awards: the Rolex guide places it among the most spectacular courses in Europe, the magazine Il Mondo del Golf ranks it 16th among the twenty most beautiful in Italy, and the Top 100 Golf Courses ranking puts it first in Sardinia and 13th in Italy. A three-hole par-3 executive course and the practice area complete the offering.

The golf course is open all year and the secretariat works every day from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm. Tee times are booked by email at [email protected] or on 348 6914889. The club does not publish its 2026 green fee online: the rates page refers visitors to the booking process, and that is where prices and tailor-made golf-plus-stay packages are requested.

Inside the estate you get around on foot or by golf cart, which is best rented in advance: between the car parks and the sea only electric carts and service vehicles may circulate.

Is Arenas presents itself as a private resort for golfers: the guesthouses, under the same ownership as the course, sleep a maximum of 40 people. The Casa degli Ulivi has two junior suites and two doubles in an olive garden; Casa Hole #5 overlooks the dogleg of the 5th hole, and guests can start their round right from there. Then there are the Golf Houses, Sardinian-style terraced villas with a kitchen.

The Bistrot degli Ulivi serves traditional Sardinian recipes and local fish, with dinners on the garden patios; the restaurant and bar are reserved for players. About 800 metres from the course is the beach club on a five-kilometre beach, with sunbeds and umbrellas for golfers.

• A desert in Italy. Since the eighteenth century, grazing and felling turned the ancient forest into more than 3,000 hectares of sand, which according to the owners was Italy's only desert.
• Five million pines. In the 1950s, with Marshall Plan funds, around 1,500 workers planted the pine forest over ten years, protecting the seedlings with acacia hedges.
• The gardener foxes. By eating the berries and dispersing the seeds, the foxes helped bring the juniper back: today there are more than 400,000 plants, and for years hunting them was banned.
• Green certificate. In 2013 the course obtained the European GEO on Course certification from the Golf Environment Organization, the first in Italy according to the club.