A Buddies’ Golf Getaway to Italy

Italy hits the sweet spot for a buddies’ getaway: serious golf, but never so serious it stops being fun. You get dramatic, memorable courses, food and wine worth travelling for, and a relaxed pace that suits a group who came to enjoy themselves as much as to count their handicaps.

Three regions do the heavy lifting. Sicily gives you the volcano theatre of Il Picciolo Etna alongside the championship golf of Verdura on the coast. Tuscany centres on La Bagnaia near Siena, where the golf comes with rolling hills, cypress trees and a cellar list that makes the evening debrief a genuine event. And the deep south and islands, Puglia and Sardinia, bring courses like San Domenico and Is Molas that most of your group won’t have played and will talk about long after they’re home. Pick one base, play a couple of different layouts around it, and nobody’s living out of a suitcase.

The golf is the reason you’re going, so here’s where the real character lives. Il Picciolo Etna plays out under Europe’s most active volcano, a genuinely unforgettable backdrop and a course with enough movement to keep every standard of player honest. Verdura, Sicily is the showpiece, championship golf laid out along the Mediterranean with holes that run right to the water’s edge. Over in Puglia, San Domenico winds through olive groves and ancient stone walls, while Acaya Golf Club offers a parkland test with a bit of bite. And on Sardinia, Is Molas is the island’s grand old championship venue, the kind of course that rewards the player in your group who actually warms up.

For a 4-8 group we’d typically pair two or three of these around a single resort base, so you bank the variety without the logistics headache. Tell us roughly the standard of your group and how competitive the order of merit is getting, and we’ll match the courses to it.

A good mates’ trip needs a base that works as well at 9pm as it does at 9am. Picciolo Etna Golf Resort & Spa puts you on the doorstep of the volcano golf with a spa for the morning-after recovery. La Bagnaia Golf & Spa Resort near Siena is a restored Tuscan hamlet, all stone and vineyards, ideal if your group likes long dinners and a good cellar. And Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sicily is the blow-out option: a sprawling coastal resort with the golf, the beach and the pools all in one place, the trip where nobody needs to leave the property unless they want to.

We’ll size the rooms to the group, twins for the ones splitting costs, singles for the ones who snore, and sort the transfers so the only driving anyone does is off the first tee.

Here’s the part that matters when you’re the one collecting everyone’s money. Every Golf Planet Holidays trip with flights is ATOL Protected, and your group’s money is held in trust with PTS until you’ve actually travelled, so it’s safeguarded the whole way through, not sitting at risk the moment you pay. You organise the fourballs; we’ll make sure the booking itself is watertight.

It’s tailor-made and enquiry-based, which simply means there’s no rigid package to squeeze your group into. You tell us the dates, the rough budget and how many rounds you’re after, we price it in GBP from £350 per person and build it around you. Travelling from the US? Italy is superb value against a strong dollar, and we’ll add flights as an ATOL-protected option or leave them out if you’d rather route your own, whichever suits the group. And if you’d prefer someone on the ground to run the whole thing, ask about our hosted and escorted group trips, where everything from tee times to dinner reservations is handled for you.