MARCO SIMONE A MADE-TO-MEASURE HOST

Chris Bertram travelled to Rome to assess the essentially brand-new course that will stage the upcoming Ryder Cup

- Chris Bertram, MICHAEL CATLING

I went to Marco Simone two days after watching The Open at St Andrews. It was illuminating to walk around the courses that host golf’s two biggest events within such a short space of time and it struck me that while they both have 18 holes and are covered in grass, the similarities largely end there.

I love St Andrews Old. It vies with Royal County Down as my favourite course in the world – and I have more than 500 to choose from, including all but seven of the finest 200 in Europe. The Old is our GB&I No.1 and it is, needless to say, simply a magical place to play the game.

It has spine-tingling mystique, peerless history and I could make a case for at least half the holes being in the Top 100 in GB&I, but it is actually a very modest host of The Open. It is a terrible viewing arena for a start, and the players hit it too far these days for its strategy and nuance to be enjoyed in full. It hosts The Open because it kind of has to.

The Open infrastructure fits round the Old course, as it should. Over in Rome, it is a very different story. The course fits around the Ryder Cup infrastructure, and you can see why. Not for the first time, the course that stages the Ryder Cup has been designed specifically to host the biennial event.

Marco Simone isn’t brand new, but it has been redesigned so thoroughly that it almost qualifies as new. Italy wanted the Cup, Rome was the obvious choice of city, and with no course able to stage it, one with the necessary space to be transformed had to be created.