Golf and the environment: the courses with GEO certification

The word «sustainable» has lost its weight through repetition. To tell a golf course that genuinely works on the environment from one that merely claims to, there is an international benchmark: GEO certification, awarded by the GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf, a non-profit body. In Italy only a few courses hold it, and it is worth knowing which.

What GEO Certified means

To earn it, a club must record practices and data on a platform run by the Foundation, called OnCourse, on three themes: nature, resources and community. An independent verifier checks the information and visits the course. It is therefore a process certification, verified by a third party: it attests to a commitment and a method, not to an absolute level of zero impact. It does not say, for example, how much water a course uses. The up-to-date list of certified clubs is published by the GEO Foundation.

There is an earlier step, an entirely Italian one: «Impegnati nel Verde», the award created in 2009 by the Italian Golf Federation, which assesses five areas (water, energy, biodiversity, landscape and environmental restoration, cultural heritage). According to a 2019 EGA text, the European federation, the award had been given to 79 clubs; 47 of them had begun the GEO pathway and 12 had completed it. These are 2019 figures, so they should be read as an order of magnitude.

Seven golf courses with GEO certification in Italy

Is Arenas: the pine forest born from the desert

The Is Arenas, in Narbolia, bears the signature of Robert von Hagge, with a par-72 layout of 6,317 metres from the professional tees, in a corridor of pines and junipers. Its environmental story is its real distinguishing feature: from the eighteenth century, grazing and felling had turned the ancient forest into more than 3,000 hectares of sand; in the 1950s, with Marshall Plan funds, about 1,500 workers planted the pine forest. Today there are more than 400,000 junipers, and the foxes, by spreading the seeds, helped the forest return. In 2013 it earned, according to the club, the European GEO on Course certification, the first in Italy.

Terme di Saturnia: the water that heals the turf

At the Terme di Saturnia Golf Club, 18 holes, par 72, by Ronald Fream, GEO arrived in 2014, together with the Federgolf «Impegnati nel Verde» award. The resort describes three practices: drainage linked to lakes that collect rainwater for reuse, grass varieties that allow, according to the resort, savings of about 30% of water, and a weekly treatment of the turf with thermal water, whose sulphur prevents fungal diseases. For a place to stay there is the Terme di Saturnia Natural Spa & Golf Resort.

Bogogno and GardaGolf: the North joins GEO

Bogogno, 36 holes by Von Hagge, earned GEO in 2018, according to Golf Business News of 26 November 2018, with the help of the environmental consultant Stefano Boni. The same source says that GardaGolf had received approval shortly before, and that in 2018, the year of the Italian Open, the club won the IAGTO Sustainability Award.

San Domenico: GEO in 2019

The San Domenico Golf, in Savelletri, has published on its own website the GEO Certificate of 2019, with the accompanying report. The course, a par 72 of more than 6,300 metres designed by Andy Haggar, uses bermuda on the fairways, fescue in the rough and pencross on the greens. Guests stay at the Masseria San Domenico, under the same ownership, or at Borgo Egnazia, whose village can be seen from the clubhouse.

Chervò and Albarella

Chervò San Vigilio, 36 holes on Lake Garda around a twelfth-century abbey, lists «GEO Certified» among its awards, without a year. The Albarella Golf Links, on the Venetian island of Albarella, a sea links dating from 1972 on sand dredged from the sea, reports on its website «Impegnati nel Verde» in 2020 and GEO Certification in 2024: the most recent certification among these seven clubs.

And Argentario?

Among the courses most often cited for the environment is the Argentario Golf Club, but it holds a different certification: BioAgriCert, for maintenance using only natural products, obtained in 2006 according to the resort. It is not a GEO, and the distinction matters: they are two different standards.

Curiosities

• Gardener foxes. At Is Arenas the foxes, by eating juniper berries, helped to spread the seeds.
• Sulphur instead of fungicides. At Saturnia the sulphur in the thermal water prevents, according to the resort, fungal diseases of the turf.
• A sea of sand. The island of Albarella rests on more than 2 million cubic metres of sand dredged from the sea.