It’s a few weeks ahead of the 2023 Ryder Cup, which starts Sept. 29 and runs until Oct. 1, and Lavinia Biagiotti Cigna can’t hide her excitement. After all, she has been preparing for this event for eight years, when the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club won the bid to host the major golf tournament in 2015.

“I feel a great responsibility and emotion; this is a project for the country, a big investment, and it’s a great opportunity for tourism and to attract capitals to Rome and the country,” says Biagiotti Cigna, who is president of the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, located in Guidonia, about 10 miles from Rome, and is president and chief executive officer of the Biagiotti Group Fashion company.

She is especially fond of the location as the 11th-century Marco Simone castle is her home and the headquarters of the group, and she has long worked to preserve the territory and restore several landmark monuments in Rome, such as the Fontana della Dea Roma.

At the end of the ‘70s, her parents, the late designer Laura Biagiotti and her husband Gianni Cigna, bought the castle, restored it and built the golf course to prevent additional urbanization of the area. “My parents did not play golf, but they wanted to preserve the green and the nature here, yet at the same time provide Rome with a service that would attract international events,” she recalls. “My mother used to say this is the biggest green skirt she had ever designed.”

Over the past several years the original course designed by Jim Fazio has been rebuilt for the Ryder Cup and expanded by European Golf Design in cooperation with Tom Fazio 2nd to more than 7,299 yards. Biagiotti Cigna worked closely with CONI, the Italian National Olympic Committee, and the Italian Golf Federation, and with the Italian State, which developed a web of infrastructure to support the arrival of golf fans from around the globe.

“We expect 1.8 billion people in 192 countries to watch the broadcast of the Cup and 300,000 spectators,” she says, noting that tickets were sold out a year ago.

First played in 1927, this is the first time the Ryder Cup will take place in Italy and it is only the third venue in continental Europe and outside of the U.K., following Valderrama in Spain in 1997 and Le Golf National in France in 2018.

The cup was named after the British businessman Samuel Ryder, who donated the trophy, and the competition sees the U.S. and Europe face off in the only sporting event in which the latter competes as a team — 12 European against 12 American golfers. It is played every two years, alternating between a European or American city, and was supposed to take place in 2022 but was pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biagiotti Cigna admits “this is the greatest entrepreneurial and personal challenge” she has had to face, starting from the bid itself, “a very complicated process.” Italy was pitted against Germany, Spain and Austria. She is still in awe of the scale of the Ryder Cup and the importance of the tournament.

However, she continues, “Nature here is the true challenge; it teaches you to mentally rebalance, in sync with the seasons and not in advance — as we do in Fashion. I learned a lot in the process, it has enriched me, and further strengthened my connection to the territory. It taught me to be in tune with the pace of nature, to be even more practical in how I express myself,” she says.

“I just thought I would sow the seeds and the grass would grow, but that’s not how it works. These seeds seemed not to want to grow here; it was either too cold or too hot. It was challenging but then it all worked out. You cannot force nature, which sometimes throws you unexpected curveballs. This experience taught me that you must become in sync and in harmony with nature and respect it. You can’t and you mustn’t force it.”

Extensive work was done on the 18-hole, 72-par course and the 1,000-year-old tower of Marco Simone’s castle stands by the players’ first drive. Looking out in the distance, one can even catch a glimpse of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. The layout was modified “not only to provide numerous risk and reward opportunities for the world’s leading players, but also to maximize the natural rolling countryside terrain, allowing guests the best views of the game,” Biagiotti says.

Marco Simone is built using the most current sustainable features and with the objective to save water. She explains that the course features an innovative system to recover rain water, which also helps to drain the field, and she employed a special turfgrass that grows without the use of pesticides and allows water to be saved.

Golf was a recurring theme and inspiration for her spring 2023 collection, which she presented with a show in Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio in September last year and was opened by golf ace Alessandra Fanali, who showed her swing. Biagiotti has also launched a dedicated logo with a small crown on some apparel pieces, but she has decided to focus on the emotional energy of fragrances.

Biagiotti’s perfume division, which was licensed for 20 years to Procter & Gamble before passing to Angelini Group in 2015, is strategic for the company, and the designer is marking the Ryder Cup with two dedicated Roma scents for men and women.

“My mother used to say that a perfume is the dress of the soul, and I would like to connect a specific fragrance to the emotion of this golf event, to remember what perfume you were wearing when you followed the team,” she explains.

However, she is considering creating an apparel capsule to respond to a specific request from the American market. “We expect 50 percent of spectators to be arriving from the U.S.; the Ryder Cup’s brand awareness is huge in America,” she points out.

Marco Simone includes a junior academy, an agonistic team and a kids’ club, as well as a gym, a spa, a swimming pool and a restaurant. “Our motto is ‘playing the future’ and we are committed to growing the next generation of golfers,” she offers.

“There is pleasure and pride in leaving something that will live on in the territory and donating a new destination. And I feel like this is a return trip. My mother was the first Italian designer to hold a show in China in 1988 and in Russia in 1995, going out in the world, and now I am helping to bring the world here, to show how beautiful this location is, where Galileo Galilei also lived, and offer a new future to it.”