I recently had the opportunity to play the newly redesigned course where the 2023 Ryder Cup will be played—Marco Simone Golf & Country Club on the outskirts of Rome. Twenty-two years earlier almost to the day, I had enjoyed an older version of Marco Simone on an assignment to write about The Eternal City’s golf and eating options.

That trip introduced me to golf Italian-style, and a dozen times over the past two decades I’ve made monthlong visits to the land of my father’s ancestors, playing courses from the sunny southern coast of Sicily to the Alpine hills on the Swiss border. In most ways, golf in Italy is like golf elsewhere, with certain delectable differences.