The Italian open embraces its past while looking to its future

In 2003, when the tournament returned to Gardagolf, Manassero was there. “I used to collect bibs from caddies on the 18th,” he said in an email, “getting loads of players’ golf balls.” Mathias Gronberg of Sweden won that event by two strokes, the last time Italy’s national championship visited this scenic country club lined by cypress and olive trees with panoramic views of Lake Garda.

Beginning Thursday, after a 15-year absence, Gardagolf plays host to the 75th Italian Open, which should be in line for a permanent home once the venue for the 2022 Ryder Cup is completed in Rome. The national open has shifted from a fall to a spring date during the start of the Lombardy region’s dry season and, if the weather cooperates, Gardagolf should play fast and firm. For Manassero, who is the official touring pro at Gardagolf, playing in the Italian Open at his home course is something he’s dreamed about ever since the day Rocca handed him his putter.

“I know everything about the course,” said Manassero, who in 2010 at 17 became the youngest winner in European Tour history. “I’ve played a lot of Italian Opens, but never there. I’m really looking forward to it. It is another box ticked of amazing experiences I’ve had.”

Located in Soiano del Lago between the Rocca di Manerba, the Soiano castle and the hills of Valtenesi, Gardagolf’s 27-hole facility is an expression of the beautiful piece of property on which it was built. The three nines — of which the white and red make up the 7,201-yard championship course — are distinguished by a bloom of roses at each tee box in accordance with the course’s colors. (The third nine is the yellow.)

“It is a tricky parkland-style course in the sense that you always have to be in the right place,” Manassero said. “It is tree-lined with short par 5s and really tough par 4s.”

Manassero, 25, isn’t the only touring pro to hone his game at Gardagolf. So, too, did Nino Bertasio, 29, who moved a short distance from the club when he was 10 and remembers walking all 18 holes with Colin Montgomerie when he shot a Sunday 65 here in the 2003 Open. Bertasio, who closed with a 64 in last year’s Open to secure his European Tour playing privileges for this season, said the undulating greens would present the biggest challenge.

“It is a second-shot golf course, if you ask me,” he said. “Scoring should be quite low. If conditions are favorable, I’d expect close to 20-under to win.”

Bertasio knows a thing or two about going low at Gardagolf. He once shot 60 with two bogeys in a pro-am here. “But it was preferred lies so it doesn’t count as the course record,” he said.

Tournament organizers have flipped the nines for the Open, and shifted the ninth to play as the 10th and the eighth as No. 18. One of the more distinctive settings will be the par-4, 488-yard finishing hole, played from an elevated tee that favors a right-to-left ball flight on the drive and left-to-right shot on the approach. The leader will have to avoid a stream to the right and a sea of trees off the tee before stroking an approach to a long, narrow green protected by bunkers left and right. A par here is to be cherished, and it will ensure that no lead will be safe.

The future appears bright for the Open, which last year was added to the Rolex Series, a collection of tournaments each with a purse of $7 million. Now the goal is to produce a course that merits designation as one of the European Tour’s flagship events. Many of the country’s acclaimed courses either don’t have the space for the necessary infrastructure or their locations aren’t conducive to attracting spectators to the Open. The previous two years, at Golf Club Milano, north of Milan within Monza Park, were an exception.

“The golf course was good, but it wasn’t great, and for Rolex Series events, we need great courses,” said Keith Pelley, the European Tour’s chief executive.

Bertasio summed up the current dilemma for the Italian Golf Federation.

“You can have the Irish Open in the middle of nowhere and people are still going to drive three hours to come and see the tournament in rain and wind,” he said. “In Denmark, they have thousands of people sleeping in tents because there aren’t hotels around. The Italians aren’t going to do that for golf. Soccer, yes, but golf, no.”

Part of Italy’s Ryder Cup vision is to create a world-class venue that can host the Italian Open annually. Marco Simone Golf & Country Club was built in the late 1980s by fashion designer Laura Biagiotti, transforming about 370 acres of country a mere 10 miles from the heart of Rome, with views of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, into 27 golf holes surrounding an 11th-century castle. As part of the agreement that led to Rome’s being selected as the host city for the 2022 Ryder Cup, the remodeling of Marco Simone will be overseen by European Golf Design, the European Tour’s in-house design firm.

“The course is the spark plug that will hopefully drive this sport and bring Italian golf to a new level,” Pelley said. “That was a key part of the decision when we decided to bring the Cup to Rome.”

Ask any of the Italian touring pros to describe their reaction in December 2015 to their country’s landing the prestigious biennial event between 12-man sides representing the United States and Europe and they will all say it was a bigger upset than Europe’s “Miracle at Medinah” comeback from a 10-6 deficit on the final day to retain the Cup in 2012.

“No one gave Italy a chance, really, when the finalists were announced, so to beat countries like Germany and Spain and Austria was a surprise,” said Francesco Molinari, who won last week’s European Tour PGA Championship and played in the 2010 and 2012 Ryder Cups. The two-time Italian Open champion is the highest-ranked Italian golfer at No. 20. “It was an amazing job to convince the Ryder Cup committee to invest so much in the Italian Open and everything around the Ryder Cup,” he said.

Funding disputes have delayed construction of the Marco Simone layout and have led to rumors that Scottish and Irish courses are waiting in the wings as replacements, but Pelley quashed such talk and said groundbreaking was scheduled for this fall. That likely means Marco Simone won’t be ready to host the Italian Open until at least 2021.

“We had hoped to have it as early as 2019 or 2020,” Pelley said. “We’re still four years out for the Ryder Cup and there’s not a concern about the timing.”

In the meantime, Manassero and Bertasio have the luxury of a home game and local knowledge on their side this year, although Manassero said that presented its own set of challenges.

“If you have some tickets,” he said, “give them to me because I’m in trouble.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.