Inside the Rosewood CdB Golf Cup, Europe's Rising Luxury Golf Tournament

Castiglion del Bosco in Tuscany hosts a twice-yearly golf tournament and features a course designed by Tom Weiskopf. The club opened in 2011 in the UNESCO-protected Val d’Orcia and was previously playable only by members. The club’s exclusivity resembled other invite-only private clubs such as Augusta National and Pine Valley, but the setting also included a luxury hotel and a vineyard producing highly rated Brunello di Montalcino wines. Member numbers remained low and the course was often empty. In 2022, Massimo and Chiara Ferragamo sold the site for about €400 million, and the new owner opened the course to hotel guests to grow membership while keeping it capped at 300.

"Perhaps surprisingly, there aren't many truly uber-exclusive golf clubs. There's Augusta National, home of the Masters and otherwise inaccessible to all but its 300-odd members and their guests. Cypress Point, Burning Tree or Pine Valley Golf Club, all in the US, could be added to the list, as could JCB Golf and Country Club in the UK. All private, all invite-only - all closed to pay-and-play golfers."

"Tuscany's Castiglion del Bosco was designed by the late and venerated course architect Tom Weiskopf and opened in 2011 in the UNESCO-protected Val d'Orcia, and for years it was only playable by members. While the prestige this brought the club was clear, adopting the Augusta model didn't quite add up. Not simply because in Italy golf is less popular than water polo and knitting (no joke), but because the course was on the same estate as one of the world's finest luxury hotels, and a vineyard producing some of the most highly rated of the region's Brunello di Montalcino wines."

"If it seems natural that a stay-and-play package for hotel guests might have been a success, it was not a policy the club entertained. Perhaps unsurprisingly, member numbers never got going, and the course was almost always empty. But then recently, change. In 2022, Massimo and Chiara Ferragamo - the scions of the Ferragamo luxury empire who 20 years earlier had lovingly transformed the abandoned borgo into what has since become a three-Michelin-Key Rosewood hotel - sold the site to an undisclosed buyer for a reported €400 million."

"After taking advice, the new owner decided to open up the course to hotel guests, stimulating the membership base which, capped at 300, would remain small, and in turn"

Read at Elite Traveler