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Great Courses
The layouts, architects and signature holes worth the trip.
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Great Courses
Italy's most beautiful golf courses: eighteen layouts
In 1978, at Pevero, Dale Hayes won the Italian Open with 293 strokes, five over par: according to the club it is still the highest winning score on the European circuit. The beauty of an Italian course rarely lies in its ease.
13 min read
Great CoursesThe architects who designed Italian golf
One name keeps turning up on Italian courses, an architect little known outside golf: Marco Croze, from Franciacorta, where he worked with Pete Dye, to Versilia, Grado and Jesolo. Here is who laid out the fairways we play.
5 min read
Great CoursesVerdura: Kyle Phillips's 45 holes in Sicily
Sir Rocco Forte wanted a golf holiday in Sicily of the kind that, by his own admission, did not exist in Europe, and at Sciacca he got 45 holes without a single petrol engine. On Sicily's south-western coast, the architect of Kingsbarns designed 45 holes across 570 acres of orange groves, olive groves and sea.
6 min read
Great CoursesItaly's most spectacular golf holes
A green shaped like Africa, a tee in the middle of a lake, a par 4 that drops sheer onto the rocks: ten Italian courses with a hole worth the journey, and where to sleep to play it.
8 min read
Great CoursesArgentario Golf Club: the course on the promontory
To win his first DP World Tour title, at Porto Ercole, Adrien Saddier needed two hundred starts. On the Argentario promontory above the Orbetello lagoon, the course that hosted the 2025 Italian Open is also the only one in Italy with a PGA National licence.
5 min read
Great CoursesThe courses that have hosted the Italian Open
From the Mottarone of the early editions to Argentario for the 82nd, played on 29 June 2025: over a century the Italian Open has toured an entire geography of courses, and many can still be booked.
8 min read
Great CoursesFranciacorta's golf courses compared
Between 35 and 105 euros: that is the gap, in the price lists published by the clubs, between an 18-hole round at Colombera on a weekday and one at Franciacorta Golf Club on a high-season weekend. Four courses compared between Brescia and Bergamo, with the choice based on the kind of day you want.
6 min read
Great CoursesVilla d'Este and its twelve Italian Opens
No Italian club has hosted the Italian Open more often than the one at Montorfano, above Como: twelve editions on a course of just 5,760 metres. In 2026 it turns one hundred.
5 min read
Great CoursesGolf and the environment: the courses with GEO certification
In 2013, according to the club, a Sardinian course born in a pine forest planted on a desert of sand became the first in Italy to earn GEO certification. The list has grown since, but it is not long: here are seven certified clubs and what the badge means.
6 min read
Great CoursesRoyal Park I Roveri: two courses at the gates of Turin
“The most beautiful hole in Italy”: that is how La Gazzetta dello Sport described the 17th at Royal Park I Roveri in 2011. At Fiano, two 18-hole courses share the former Savoy hunting reserve.
7 min read
Great CoursesSan Domenico Golf: the sea from every hole
The mistral, says the club, is an ally or an opponent at Savelletri depending on the hole, and the sea is in view from every point of the course. An 18-hole Andy Haggar design among centuries-old olive trees and the ruins of ancient Egnathia, a few metres from the Adriatic, which hosted the Challenge Tour Grand Final.
5 min read
Great CoursesThe 9-hole courses worth travelling for
A nine-hole course is played twice, which is why place matters more than design: at Courmayeur a river runs through it, at Carezza there are 400 metres of elevation change, at Cortina every hole is named after a peak. Ten short courses, chosen because each has a reason to go.
7 min read
Great CoursesTorino La Mandria
According to the club, Edoardo and Francesco Molinari grew up as golfers on the fairways of La Mandria; in 2018 Francesco won the Claret Jug at Carnoustie. Circolo Golf Torino has played since 1956 in a Savoy park, with two 18-hole courses and three Italian Opens.
6 min read
Great CoursesKyle Phillips in Italy
From Scotland to Morocco, the Netherlands and South Korea, the map of Kyle Phillips's courses has a single point in Italy, and it lies in Sciacca, Sicily.
5 min read
Great CoursesPeter Gannon and the historic clubs of the North
Three clubs designed by Peter Gannon, Stresa, Villa d'Este and Milan, have together hosted 24 editions of the Italian Open. Who was the man who laid out the oldest courses in the North in the 1920s and 1930s?
5 min read
Great CoursesSustainable golf: water, Bermuda grass and new technology
On the fairways at Cervia the grass is cut every two days to 10 millimetres and, the club says, pesticides have been eliminated since the switch to Bermuda. Behind the green of an Italian course lie maintenance choices the golfer never sees; here are the ones the clubs declare.
6 min read
Great CoursesGolf Club Bogogno
Since 2006 Bogogno has been the only Italian venue for the first stage of the European tour's Qualifying School: anyone chasing a tour card comes through here. The resort has 36 holes by Robert Von Hagge, the Conte as a links and the Bonora as parkland, with 2026 rates from 90 to 135 euros.
6 min read
Great CoursesBiella Le Betulle
Assembling the 70 hectares of Biella Le Betulle took some 170 landowners, in an Italy that had barely eleven 18-hole courses. John Morrison's design, 6,534 metres at par 73 and 590 metres above sea level, remains a benchmark of Piedmont golf.
6 min read
Great CoursesCastelconturbia, 27 holes between Novara and Lake Maggiore
The course record at Castelconturbia is 66, and it carries two signatures: José María Olazábal's and Costantino Rocca's. The layout is a 27-hole Robert Trent Jones Sr. design with Monte Rosa on the horizon.
6 min read
Great CoursesPlaying on a volcano: golf on Etna
At Il Picciolo the hazards are ancient lava flows: one guards the left of the 7th green, a field of stones cuts across the 14th. This is Etna's course, 18 holes, par 72, opened in 1989, and this is the guide to playing it: key holes, wind, 2026 rates and where to stay.
7 min read
Great CoursesRobert Trent Jones in Italy: his courses
A volcanic crater drained by the Romans, a Savoy hunting reserve, a Benedictine castle: Robert Trent Jones and his son found seven settings in Italy, and no two are alike.
6 min read
Great CoursesMarco Simone, the Home of the 2023 Ryder Cup
On Friday 29 September 2023, after the opening session, Europe led 4-0, something that had never happened in Ryder Cup history. The course where it unfolded, in Guidonia, is a fifteenth-century castle with a par 72 around it.
5 min read
Great CoursesItalian golf clubs founded before 1930
The parish priest of Menaggio, according to local chronicles, noted with disapproval that in 1907 some Englishmen had founded the “Golf Club”. Today that club is one of the Italian clubs born before 1930 that can still be played, and not the only one contesting a claim to seniority.
8 min read
Great CoursesAcademies and performance centres: where to train on holiday
A 30-minute Trackman lesson is part of Verdura's Golf Inclusive offer, while in Appiano the training centre sits within the walls of a castle. Nine places in Italy where a golf holiday can also become a stretch of work on your game.
6 min read
Great CoursesAcquasanta, Rome's historic golf club
At Acquasanta the members' minutes were kept in English until 1929, and for decades sheep kept the fairways. Italy's oldest club, by its own account, still plays between a Roman aqueduct and the Appian Way.
6 min read