Varese

Golf Club Varese lies to the north of Milan, in hilly terrain next to the Parco regionale Campo dei Fiori. It’s said that golf was played in the nearby city as far back as 1897 at the Grand Hotel Excelsior but Golf Club Varese was not established until 1934.

Peter Gannon and Cecil Blandford co-designed a number of Italian courses back in the 1930s, including Ugolino and Villa d’Este, and they were engaged by the inaugural committee to set out the original 9-hole course for the members.

This layout was subsequently doubled in size in the mid-1950s when Baldovino Dassù added an additional nine (today’s holes 3-9, 14 and 15). The signature hole is reckoned to be the downhill par four 10th but the doglegged short par four 7th is not without its admirers.

Alberto Binaghi, European Tour pro, has this to say about Varese: “the course has been built on hilly ground and you will seldom play a shot on level ground… the most difficult hole is certainly the 16th but the one you can easily lose more than a stroke at is the 4th.”