Magazine
Great Courses
The layouts, architects and signature holes worth the trip.
Featured
Great Courses
27- and 36-hole courses: several days of golf without changing club
Four rounds in four days, and no two alike: that is the promise of clubs with 27 or 36 holes, where a golf week does not mean repacking the suitcase every evening. Here are twelve addresses, from Monferrato to Sicily.
9 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 CoursesPevero, Robert Trent Jones's course on the Costa Smeralda
The 16th hole at Pevero is a tribute to James Bond. The club ties it to 1962, the year the saga debuted on screen and, in its telling, the year the Costa Smeralda began.
6 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 CoursesItaly's Highest Golf Courses
From the 2,050 metres of Cervino to the roughly 1,000 of Premeno and Lanzo Intelvi, golf in Italy is played across a drop of more than a thousand metres, and every mountain club claims its own record.
8 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
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 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 CoursesArzaga: Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player in the Garda hills
At Arzaga, under the local rules, a wall and a toilet block are integral parts of the course: if the ball ends up against them, there is no free drop. In the Valtenesi hills above Lake Garda, two famous names designed 27 holes at the foot of a fifteenth-century villa.
6 min read
Great CoursesGolf Club Milano: playing inside Monza Park
Seventy-three thousand spectators and seven million dollars in prize money: in 2017 the Italian Open reached its highest numbers at Monza, on a course that has occupied a corner of the Royal Park since 1928.
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 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 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 CoursesPasseier, Lana, Petersberg: South Tyrol compared
A nine-hole course beneath a castle, an 18-hole “target golf” layout at the end of a valley and another at 1,250 metres: three South Tyrolean courses, 18 holes for 90 to 106 euros on the published price lists. How to choose between Val Passiria, Lana and Petersberg, and which hotel serves as the base for each.
7 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 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 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 CoursesAre there links courses in Italy?
Sand, dunes, wind and the sea close by: the ingredients of the Scottish links are found at very few courses in Italy, and one was built with sand dredged from the sea.
7 min read
Great CoursesIs Molas: the hole shaped like Africa and four Italian Opens
At the 14th at Is Molas the green is almost surrounded by water and traces the outline of the African continent. For Baldovino Dassù, who won the first Italian Open played here in 1976, the advice is to fly over Cape Town.
6 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 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 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 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 CoursesWomen's golf in Italy: the clubs that have hosted the Opens
In 1987 Laura Davies won the first women's Italian Open at Croara, despite an 8 on the 17th hole. Since then a tournament that has changed venue several times has left a map of Italian clubs, from Lignano to Il Picciolo.
7 min read