Ryder Cup 2023: Photos of every hole at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome

Check out these hole-by-hole photos of Marco Simone headed into the 2023 Ryder Cup.

All the golf world’s eyes will be on Marco Simone Golf & Country Club this week for the 2023 Ryder Cup. Before you get your first look at the course on television or online coverage, check out the following photos of each hole to see what the U.S. and European teams face.

Marco Simone opened in 1989 with a layout by David Mezzacane and Jim Fazio, but that course doesn’t exist anymore. The whole layout was renovated and rerouted in 2018-2020 by a team from European Golf Design led by Dave Sampson, with American architect Tom Fazio II serving as a consultant.

The current hilly layout – 155 feet of elevation change in all – was designed with the Ryder Cup in mind, with several drivable par 4s. It will play to a par of 71 with a yardage of 7,181 yards for the biennial team competition.

Check the yardage book: Marco Simone for the 2023 Ryder Cup in Italy

Marco Simone, a par 72 that will play 7,268 yards for the Ryder Cup. is a public-access layout with tee times available.

Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome – site of the 2023 Ryder Cup between teams from the U.S. and Europe – originally was designed by David Mezzacane and Jim Fazio and opened in 1989.

The layout was completely renovated in 2018-2020 by a team of European Golf Design led by Dave Sampson in conjunction with Tom Fazio II, a leading American architect and the son of Jim Fazio – Tom Fazio worked for his dad on the original layout. The renovation included a complete rerouting of the hilly layout with the Ryder Cup in mind. With 155 feet of elevation change across the course, the holes were laid out to favor match play, with several drivable par 4s.

Marco Simone – a public-access layout with tee times available on the course’s website – will play to a par of 71 with the scorecard showing 7,181 yards. It’s likely the host European team will adjust yardages in attempt to benefit itself. The rough has been reported to be deep and thick heading into the Ryder Cup, putting an emphasis on accurate tee shots to relatively tight fairways.

Thanks to a yardage book provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the players face at the Ryder Cup. Check out the maps of each hole below.

Q&A: Why is France’s Jean Van de Velde, who nearly won the 1999 British Open, teaching golf in Mexico?

Who can forget the way he squandered a three-stroke lead on the last hole of the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie?

I flew to Mexico for a golf lesson from a Frenchman.

That’s where Jean Van de Velde, the affable golfer who once nearly had both hands on the Claret Jug but let it slip away in dramatic fashion is living and working these days, heading up the Jean Van de Velde Golf Academy at Punta Minta, located on the southernmost point of the Riviera Nayarit, 30 miles northwest of the resort city of Puerto Vallarta.

Who can forget the way he squandered a three-stroke lead on the last hole of the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie and lost to Scotland’s Paul Lawrie in a three-man playoff?

Van de Velde kept his chin up and dealt with defeat with class and a smile on his face. In October, we met for a golf lesson and a talk about the game he loves. It could’ve continued for hours, especially if we started drinking a good bottle of his wine, but unfortunately he had pick up duty and had to run off to fetch his son. Suffice it to say, he’s still active in the game as an instructor, television broadcaster, tournament operator and wine merchant among other things. One of the more fascinating parts of our talk occurred when we talked about the golf swing as he tried to straighten out my penchant to hook it and more recent struggles with a block to the right — “That’s when you load too much on the left on the backswing,” he said.

Jean Van de Velde gives Golfweek senior writer Adam Schupak a lesson at his golf academy in Punta Mita in Mexico. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)

“I’m a guy who looks at what the golf ball does to identify what system you’re in. Whether it is a draw or a fade, as long as you control that shot it’s OK. What matters is repetition,” he said. “Then you decide, OK, this is what you do, and maybe with a little effort this is where you can be. Do you want to embark on that journey or learn to control the system you’re already in? I’m not the guy who is going to try to transform you just for the sake of it just because I have one swing thought in my head. Do I have a few preferences? It’s like the salt and the pepper in a recipe. At the end of the day, you need to have the ingredients.”

During his playing career, Van de Velde worked with legends in the teaching world from John Jacobs to David Leadbetter to Butch Harmon.

“David tried to re-make a few things,” Van de Velde said. “We tried to work on my takeaway. I was bringing the club a little too inside, I was crossing the line, my body had completed the turn and my arms were still moving. It’s all fine as long as you have the right timing, but when things go wrong again, where do you start? How do you get back on track as fast as you can? He said, ‘This is what I think,’ but at the end of the day it was my decision. He didn’t burn me with an iron and you’re going to do it. I implemented a few changes so I could swing in a way that was going to be more reliable. I did believe and I still do that he and Butch and John Jacobs and a few others were a big influence on me and they were right in their analysis.”

He continued: “Technique and teaching, I’ve always been very interested and read a lot of things and been lucky to be around some great thinkers on the swing. I believe the swing is made up of little imperfections. If you look at me swinging, I always had my hands behind at address, but I always started with a forward press. Do you want to change that or look at what goes together and make it happen? In 1999, I had control of my system and I putted pretty well. That year you see what I did at the Open but the best golf I played was in 2000 — by a mile. I played 18-20 times in America and finished 60th on the money list. I played I think 10 times in Europe and was 20 or 30th. In my life, I tried not to reinvent things. I used what others had done and adapted to myself. I told Bernhard Langer that I was going to try to play both tours and he said, ‘Just be careful. I tried that and it was complicated.’ I knew playing in the U.S. was going to have an expiration date. My kids were already in school in Geneva. It was hard to say, you know what, I’m going to play in America. Who’s around me? Who do I rely on? It wasn’t easy. It’s different now. The guys start playing in college golf and they make their lives straight away in the U.S. They are already structured whether it is Viktor Hovland or Jon Rahm.”

Jean Van de Velde attempts to fix the ball flight of Golfweek senior writer Adam Schupak, saying, “It ain’t going left, Sunshine,” after he straightened him out. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)

Van de Velde suggested I do a drill where I held the club with the face a few degrees open at address. In his disarming style, he said, “you’re on the range. It doesn’t matter. Let’s see what happens.”

I swung and the ball flew right at the flag where I was aiming.

“It ain’t going to go left, Sunshine,” he said. “Not possible.”

In that moment, Jean Van de Velde became my latest golf guru. Here’s more from Van de Velde on the Ryder Cup, what went wrong with budding French star Victor Dubuisson and the time he stuck Jose-Maria Olazabal with the tab for a dozen or so bottles of fine wine from the Augusta National wine cellar.

R&A boss Martin Slumbers ‘pleased’ by LIV-PGA Tour-DP World Tour merger

The R&A said “we look forward to working with the new entity for the benefit of the sport globally” as to professional golf’s new format.

Martin Slumbers, CEO of the R&A, weighed in Tuesday on the announcement that LIV Golf, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour plan to merge under the umbrella of one new for-profit company that is yet to be named.

The R&A governs the sport of golf in most of the world outside the United States and Mexico. The R&A (originally part of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club but now an independent governing body) is separate from the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour. The R&A conducts the Open Championship, known by many in the U.S. as the British Open. In cooperation with the USGA, the R&A determines the Rules of Golf.

It was not made clear if the R&A had been aware of the merger ahead of Tuesday’s statement. Many professional golfers have expressed surprise upon hearing the news. The USGA had not made any statements about the planned merger as of early Tuesday afternoon.

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The full statement from Slumbers, who has been head of the R&A since 2015:

“We are pleased that an agreement has been reached which will help men’s professional golf move forward in a collaborative, constructive and innovative fashion. We care deeply about golf’s future and are committed to ensuring that the sport continues to thrive for many years to come. This agreement represents a huge step toward achieving that goal for golf and we look forward to working with the new entity for the benefit of the sport globally.”

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Greg Norman long believed LIV Golf, PGA Tour should come together: ‘One hundred percent I do’

Norman, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, was behind the creation of LIV Golf.

The PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf, who have been embroiled in a year-long bitter rivalry, have agreed to merge, they each announced Tuesday morning.

The tours, including the DP World Tour, signed an agreement that would combine their commercial businesses and rights into a new company. The move is thought to be a big win for the sport, which had become divided.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV — including the team golf concept — to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.

“Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made — to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future.”

The tours have been embroiled in a year-long bitter rivalry that has included insults being hurled back and forth by LIV commissioner and CEO Greg Norman and Monahan along with several lawsuits. As part of the new deal, those lawsuits will be dropped.

Norman, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, was behind the creation of LIV Golf. The league, financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has come under fire for what detractors say is a form of “sportswashing,” with Saudi Arabia attempting to distract from its atrocious human rights violations.

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From the start, Norman was seeking collaboration from the PGA Tour and told The Palm Beach Post last summer he believed a LIV-PGA Tour merger was in the future.

“One hundred percent I do,” Norman said when asked if he believed the two tours could come together. “Jay Monahan, if he had the decency to take our meetings right from the get-go, none of this stuff would be in place today. The game of golf would be in a much better place. The Tour would be in a much better place. European golf would be in a much better place.

“In the world of business if you got a competitor coming to challenge you, understand what your competitor’s got by sitting down and signing an NDA, having a conversation and see (what) works for us.”

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Former can’t-miss-kid Matteo Manassero tastes victory on Challenge Tour 10 years after his biggest win

“Golf is strange and hard to understand at times, and probably we shouldn’t try too hard to understand it.”

What a long strange trip it has been for Matteo Manassero to return to the winner’s circle.

On the weekend of the 10-year anniversary of his BMW PGA Championship victory, the 30-year-old Italian claimed his maiden European Challenge Tour title at the Copenhagen Challenge.

Manassero, a four-time DP World Tour winner and the youngest player to win three times on the European circuit, shot a bogey-free final-round 66, which was good enough for a one-shot victory at 12 under par and his first title since winning the 2020 Toscana Open on the Alps Tour.

Born near Verona, he started playing golf at age three with a set of plastic clubs. At 16, he became the youngest winner of the British Amateur Championship in 2009 before taking the silver medal for low amateur in the 2009 British Open Championship. Manassero climbed as high as 25th in the Official World Golf Ranking and seemed destined for greater things. But the short-hitting Italian chased distance gains and lost control of his swing and his game. He entered the week No. 575 in the world.

Manassero started the day six shots behind overnight leader Matias Honkala, but made a three-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to secure his first DP World Tour-sanctioned victory since his heroics at Wentworth in 2013.

“There are a lot of emotions,” he said. “It has been 10 years now since I won on Tour so I guess May is a good time of the year for me.

“My wife never caddies for me but this week she was here, so it’s been the perfect week and as good as any other I’ve ever had.”

Manassero started strongly in the final round with back-to-back birdies from the second hole before tacking on another at the eighth. With Honkala dropping back and South African teenager Casey Jarvis also picking up shots, Manassero was in a three-way share of the lead. However, he rose to the top with birdies at the 14th and 15th before the clincher at 18 to be crowned champion at Royal Golf Club by one stroke ahead of Jarvis. Manassero enjoyed the moment after being lost in golf’s wilderness for a decade, a can’t-miss-kid who has been one of the biggest disappointments in the professional game.

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“I’ve had a lot of down periods during those ten years but I’m still here and now I’m holding the trophy, which means I’ve done a lot of good things as well in that period of time,” he said. “In the past maybe I didn’t enjoy enough of the good times, but I definitely will now.

“I came into this week with doubts about my game and I wasn’t feeling great. This golf course isn’t a course that you can afford not to be feeling great but sometimes you grind, and it doesn’t happen and sometimes all of a sudden it clicks.

“Golf is strange and hard to understand at times, and probably we shouldn’t try too hard to understand it.”

Manassero improved to fifth on the Road to Mallorca Rankings up from 40th position, while Jarvis moves up to second from 15th place.

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South Africa’s John Bland, five-time PGA Tour Champions winner, dies at 77

John Bland won multiple titles in South Africa and on what is now the DP World Tour.

South African golfer John Bland, who won twice on the DP World Tour before coming to prominence in the U.S. on PGA Tour Champions, has died. He was 77.

Bland’s death was announced by the Sunshine Tour, of which he claimed the circuit’s Order of Merit title four times and he ranked fifth in career wins with 21. He died Tuesday at a hospital in George, South Africa “after a battle with cancer,” the Sunshine Tour said.

Born Sept. 22, 1945, in Johannesburg, Bland turned pro in 1969 and won his first of 36 titles at the 1970 Transvaal Open. He won the South African PGA Championship in 1977 over Gary Player, one of three victories that year and a total he matched again in 1983 when he claimed the European Tour’s Benson and Hedges International over Bernhard Langer.

In a professional career that spanned more than 40 years, he didn’t compete in the U.S. until turning 50 but quickly proved his mettle with five senior titles and more than $7 million in earnings. He won in his second start as a Monday Qualifier, earning exempt status for a year and went on to be named Senior PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 1996 after winning four times and finishing third on the money list. Some of his best duels were with Jim Colbert, who finished second to Bland in four of his five victories on the circuit. Bland also won three times on the European Senior Tour.

“It’s so hard to post the utterly devastating news that John Bland, my traveling companion of so many years and mentor has passed away,” fellow South African golfer Tony Johnstone tweeted. “He was so much more than a friend and words don’t express the true meaning of ‘brother’.”

Bland is survived by his wife, Sonja, three children – John-Mark, Bonney and Candice – and three grandchildren. He died with family and bulldog Handsome by his side.

The Sunshine Tour said Bland was “one of the most loved and respected South African sportsmen.”

Report: Luke Donald will replace Henrik Stenson as 2023 European Ryder Cup captain

The Englishman, a four-time European Ryder Cup player, is reported to take the helm for Rome.

Englishman Luke Donald will replace the sacked Henrik Stenson as captain of the European team in the 2023 Ryder Cup in Italy, according to a report in the Telegraph.

Stenson was canned two weeks ago after announcing he would join LIV Golf, the rival tour backed by Saudi Arabian royalty and clouded in controversy for that country’s poor record of human rights abuses and other atrocities. Stenson begins play on that tour today at Trump Bedminster in New Jersey. The longtime independent contractor has expressed disappointment in losing the honorary Ryder Cup job after breaking his captaincy contract that forbid him from playing on a rival tour by signing a lucrative contract with LIV Golf.

Donald – a four-time Ryder Cup player (2004, ’06, ’10, ’12), five-time PGA Tour winner and six-time DP World Tour winner who played college golf at Northwestern – was long rumored as a potential captain at some future Ryder Cup. The former World No. 1 served as a vice captain in the past two Ryder Cups and is playing this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic on the PGA Tour in Detroit.

According to the report, Thomas Bjorn and Edoardo Molinari will keep their gigs as vice captains in Rome.

While there was much speculation on who might replace the canned Stenson as captain, as of yet it doesn’t appear the top Euro players themselves are in any rush to jump to LIV Golf. Potential team members such as Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick, among others, have not joined LIV, with several having pledged a commitment to the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. Most of the former European Ryder Cuppers who have jumped to LIV, such as Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, are seen by many as being well past their primes and unlikely candidates to have competed in Rome. Of those who have left to compete for LIV’s Greg Norman, only the aging Sergio Garcia and Paul Casey were considered potential contenders to compete in Rome.

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Golf equipment makers are silent so far on future of sponsorship deals with PGA Tour players who intend to play first LIV Golf event

It remains unclear if equipment makers will continue to support players headed to the new Saudi Arabia-backed tour.

In the hours following the announcement that Dustin Johnson and several other PGA Tour and international players intend to compete in the new LIV Golf Series’ first tournament June 9–11 near London, the equipment companies that supply those players with gear have remained mum about player relationships and sponsorship deals.

That leaves it unclear if equipment makers will continue to support players on the new Saudi Arabia-backed tour. The LIV tour released its initial player list Tuesday evening, and as of Wednesday morning many of those players are still featured on equipment websites such as taylormadegolf.com, callawaygolf.com and pinggolf.com, as examples.

When asked by Golfweek‘s David Dusek via email Tuesday night if former world No. 1 Johnson will continue to wear TaylorMade hats and use branded bags, a TaylorMade representative responded, “We have no comment to make at this time.” That response also included Sergio Garcia’s use of a TaylorMade bag. Other companies such as Ping and Adidas did not respond to initial emails seeking comment.

This initial non-reaction follows Callaway’s sponsorship “pause” with Phil Mickelson several days after his comments about his motivations to join the LIV circuit were published by author Alan Shipnuck in February. Those comments included calling the Saudi backers of the new series “scary motherf——” and explained he was interested in documented Saudi human rights offenses less than in gaining financial leverage on the PGA Tour, which he called obnoxiously greedy.

Mickelson wasn’t included on the initial player list for the opening LIV event, although it’s possible he still might play. Mickelson has not played the PGA Tour since those comments and has visited his parents’ home in California during the week of the recent PGA Championship, where he was defending champion.

None of the players on the field list have made such outlandish publicized comments, possibly making it easier for equipment makers to ride out any potential controversy as the PGA Tour and the LIV Golf Series engage in battle and players jump ship.

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PGA Championship: With Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay back in pursuit at Southern Hills, who are the most successful caddies in men’s majors of all time?

Caddie Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay is in pursuit of his sixth major title, but who has more?

Jim “Bones” Mackay is at it again, carrying the bag and helping to strategize for Justin Thomas in this week’s PGA Championship as Thomas has climbed the leaderboard. Bones has five major titles to his caddie credit, making him one of the most successful loopers of all time in golf’s biggest events.

But, he doesn’t have the most wins.

Below, find a list of some of the caddies who have looped for the most men’s major championships. The list includes some caddies you might have heard of, and plenty who worked in the era in which caddies received almost none of the credit and were often expected to “Show up, keep up and shut up.”

But most of them can claim plenty of credit in helping their golfers earn big titles. Then check out the Caddie Hall of Fame, from which some of this information has been obtained.