Golf Nazionale - Central Italy - Italy

We played the Nazionale in November after a particularly wet autumn and due to its poor drainage the golf course was only just about fit for play.

Having said that, the greens although, they had not been swept of dew or debris, putted well even if other course maintenance was poor and haphazard. The bunkers were totally uncared for and resembled sandy beaches and the fairways had huge chunks of turf uplifted by marauding animals, and no one had bothered to repair the damage.

But the golf course is magnificent, superbly designed and set in a gorgeous parkland setting. The holes flow well and the challenge is both great fun and demanding. After a terrific start the long 7th hole is simply sensational, and the standard is maintained in the back nine. We particularly liked the long 14th and the beautiful short par 4 at 16.

But the place needs some tender love and care. The clubhouse is dreary and the facilities uninspiring. A previous reviewer states that the golf course needs a lot of thinning out of trees and shrubs, a comment with which I concur, but just as importantly it needs someone to raise the bar and create maintenance standards that are top notch. If not, I fear this outstanding golf course will, if starved of interest and possibly some investment, slip towards mediocrity. This will be a great shame for in my view it is potentially one of the best parkland golf courses I have ever played.

On arrival, both the clubhouse and the adjoining accommodation wing appear a little dated (the place is less than thirty years old) but I was later told both are due to be refurbished. Once out on the course, you can tell from the first hole that this is going to be an epic 18-hole layout as the fairway plunges downhill, past a large pond on the left, then up left to a raised green.

It’s a stout opener and the holes just get stronger as you get going – to be honest, the level of challenge is pretty unrelenting for the remainder of the round as tree-lined holes weave their way across a heavily wooded property which continually rises and falls from start to finish.

I gave top marks to each of the opening five holes – the downhill par three 3rd in the northeast corner of the estate is a beauty and the forced carry off the tee at the following hole is fearsome – but the severely doglegged 6th didn’t impress as I’ve never liked holes where you must be long off the tee in order to play your next shot directly to the flag.

After the terrific par five 7th, where the benched green is protected by three cavernous bunkers gouged into the slope in front of the putting surface, there then follows three really disconcerting holes, each of which suffers very badly from the encroachment of trees affecting the tee shot – and in the case of the remarkable 10th hole, you encounter this extreme arboreal interference at both the tee box and in front of the green!

On the back nine, I liked the downhill par three 12th and the par five 14th, which runs along a ridge to the greensite, but my favourite hole was the par four 16th, playing downhill to a prodigious offset green that sits behind acres of sand and is gloriously framed by specimen oaks.

I can’t believe only one major event (the 1991 World Cup) has been held on this course of tournament- sized proportions. For Golf Nazionale to have never hosted the Italian Open (when twenty-five others have) is absolutely criminal.

I know it’s a relative newcomer on the Italian golf scene but, from an outsider’s perspective, it’s patently perverse if this place has never been considered for selection – especially when it’s the home of the Italian Golf Federation and the National Golf School!

Then again, considering what I mentioned earlier about trees seriously hampering lines of play on many of the holes, perhaps it’s no surprise that Golf Nazionale has been overlooked. With that in mind, it must surely be time to call in the chainsaw gangs…

Jim McCann