Golf Club Pevero (Men)

Few courses on the Mediterranean can claim a pedigree quite like Pevero's. Designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and opened in 1972, it was commissioned as the crown jewel of the Costa Smeralda — the glamorous stretch of Sardinian coastline developed by the Aga Khan IV as a playground for the international elite. From the beginning, Pevero was built to match its surroundings in ambition and drama, and it largely succeeds on both counts.

The course winds through the rugged granite hills above the Gulf of Pevero, with holes that plunge toward turquoise inlets and climb back through cork oak and Mediterranean scrub. RTJ Sr. worked the terrain rather than against it, producing a layout where the land's natural severity — rocky outcroppings, severe elevation changes, wind off the sea — does much of the defending. The views are genuinely distracting, which is itself a form of difficulty.

Arzachena sits at the heart of the Costa Smeralda's resort culture, and Pevero carries that world with it: this is aspirational golf, where the setting is as much the point as the scorecard. Serious players will find it demanding; everyone else will find it memorable.