Gerre Losone

Gerre Losone lies on the valley floor of the Maggia River, close to where it flows into Lake Maggiore and the modern, open layout of the golf course contrasts wonderfully with the classic, 1920s Colt/Alison design of the 18 holes at neighbouring Ascona.

Peter Harradine cleverly constructed three ponds on the property – each of them connected by a rocky stream – to form a running water theme that carries right through many of the holes, adding greatly to the shot making challenge of the course.

A number of national competitions have been held here at Gerre Losone since the course opened in 2001 and in recent years, it has become home to the Swiss Open on the Ladies European Tour.

Peter Harradine course architect writes: Losone was created out of a completely flat cornfield. The barn and road crossing the land were situated three quarters of the way along a rectangular, uninteresting site but beautiful mountains under a fantastic blue “Ticinese” sky surround the location!

It was not easy to create an interesting course with such a boring piece of land. The landscape designers of the “Sopraceneri” made ample use of the rounded rocks and boulders abundant in the rivers of that area. The site is located on an ancient river bed which meant that we had a plentiful supply of those fantastic rocks in the sub-surface. Rocks are my favorite accessories on golf courses so I decided to utilize as many as possible in the design.

The complete layout is entirely artificial and we located mounds and trees between the fairways to provide strategy and as much player safety as possible. A rock-lined artificial stream meanders in the middle and along the entire site and through three rock-lined artificial lakes. These enormous ecological improvements have encouraged a multitude of birds and other fauna to settle on the Losone site.