Rome to host 2022 Ryder Cup

ROME: Rome organisers were celebrating on Monday after the Italian capital won the right to stage the 2022 edition of golf’s Ryder Cup for the first time.

“I’m very happy, because these things do not happen at random and there’s been an extraordinary amount of work done by our bid team,” Rome’s bid co-ordinator Marco Durante told AFP in a telephone interview on Monday.

The cream of world golf will descend on the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in seven years’ time for the biennial contest between Europe and the United States.

“The Italian capital city of Rome will host The Ryder Cup for the first time in 2022,” the statement said, adding that the “golf’s greatest team event will be staged on the Continent of Europe for the third time.”

Four nations - Austria, Germany, Italy and Spain - had been competing for the right to stage the 2022 edition.

Germany’s bid chief Marco Kaussler said he was disappointed after failing for the second successive time to persuade Ryder Cup chiefs, having lost the 2018 tournament rights to France.

However Durante, a former golf pro-turned lawyer, believes Ryder Cup officials were swung late in the day by the Italian golf federation’s proposal to boost the existing Italian Open.

From 2017, it will come with prize money totalling 7m euros. “I think our project bid was strong in each part, but our federation’s decision to make a bigger and stronger Italian Open has probably given us the last push,” he said. “We proposed an event to be included in the World Series and it will be a 7m euros prize money event, which will start in 2017 because the 2016 schedule is already there,” he added.