Golf Nazionale

About the club

Jim Fazio, whose brother Tom is among the top course architects in the US, with some help from David Mezzacane, designed the course at Nazionale, formerly known as Le Querce, which is located a half hour's drive from downtown Rome. Now one of the top clubs in Italy, Golf Nazionale is home to the National Center of the Italian Golf Federation. The course itself is built on a rolling landscape where huge oaks—the English translation of Le Querce—line the fairways, and at 6426 meters it has plenty of length for tournament play. Indeed, Golf Nazionale hosted its first championship event, the World Cup of Golf (the erstwhile Canada Cup), just a year after opening in 1990, and the management clearly has the ambition to host more. So the course rewards powerful drives—at least those that don't go wild—but can be somewhat intimidating for mere mortals.