the Roveri first, Marco Simone Golf Club from 33rd to 11th – Corriere.it

From tomorrow to Sunday the fields of the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Roma will host the 80th edition of the Italian Open, the most important national event which will launch the Ryder Cup which will be played in the same club from 29 September to 1 October.

And Marco Simone is the protagonist of one of the most important leaps forward, from 33rd to 11th, in the Italian ranking «Top 100 golf courses», a point of reference for traveling golfers in the world. But in first place in the ranking returns the Royal Park I Roveri in Turin, followed on the second step of the podium by the Le Betulle Golf Club of Biella and the Villa d’Este Golf Club, all real technical excellence of Italian golf which, according to the latest European golf participation report, has 87 thousand registered practitioners who play out of 312 different fields.

Trent Jones Sr. at the Royal Park «I Roveri» in Turin is back in first position (where it had already been in the two-year period 2016-2017). «Set up inside a 16th century hunting estate which is now the protected area of ​​the Parco Regionale della Mandria – reads the site of the ranking – this field represents the first foray by Robert Trent Jones Senior (one of the most famous architects of golf courses, ed) in Italy at the beginning of the 70s». And it has all of its distinctive features, from the strategic placement of bunkers, to the excellent irrigation and large undulating greens. With the beauty of the Alps in the background to complete the experience.

In second place «Le Betulle» of Biella. It is here, in the late 1950s, that Harry Colt’s partner, John Morrison, designed this 18-hole course for the three founding members of the golf club. In the book Golf Courses of the World, author Geoffrey Giles writes: “A golf course doesn’t have to be beautiful to be great, but beauty is a big plus. In Biella the route leads over a wonderfully rolling landscape through large birch forests. It could almost be an English moorland.’ To complete the podium the Villa d’Este, located a few kilometers north of Milan, among the Como hills covered with pine, chestnut and birch trees next to Lake Montorfano. Designed by Peter Gannon in 1926, Villa d’Este has over the years been a kind of royal retreat with kings and queens of Belgium, Great Britain, Spain and Greece.