CADDIE'S ROLE:YOU WOULD have had to turn a lot of crispy pink pages of La Gazetta della Sportbefore you got to any mention of the Italian Open last week. The daily national tabloid reports mainly on soccer and whatever else might be of passing interest to the minority of sporting Italians who have time for any other form of sport.

The Giro D’Italia featured on the cover page beside more soccer news last Saturday and if you leafed from back to front, buried on page 47 of some 50-odd pages you would have come across a piece about Matteo Manassero, a young amateur golfer who probably plays soccer too. He is a 16-year-old from Verona who shot four-under in the second round to make the cut and already he was being compared to our own child prodigy, Rory McIlroy.

Italy’s best golfer Francesco Molinari and his older brother, Edoardo, who grew up and still live in Torino, were carrying the nation’s realistic hopes for a home win. Particularly Francesco.

The venue was Royal Park Golf and Country Club which is situated behind the exclusive walls of the regal park, once a place the royalty in Italy came to hunt. Torino was the residence of the royal family and the city does have an air of majestic glory.

The course winds its way through the mature trees of the park with the backdrop of the Alps framing many of the holes. With the foliage and late blooming flowers you could not find a more pleasant area in which to amble. Combined with near perfect temperatures, it was one of those weeks where most of us on tour agreed life is indeed good.

The club is an exclusive place where the patrons of the stylish clubhouse seemed to prefer the more mundane black and white broadsheet newspapers and not the pink tabloids. As visitors we got to experience part of the true Italian culture and its unique form of queuing. We mingled with the soft underbelly of the membership in a haphazard fashion as everyone milled around the cashier from whom you had to purchase a ticket to present in turn to the waiters behind a bar. This led to another chaotic mill for a panino and a cup of coffee.

If you are a black bean lover then it was worth all the jostling. It would also make you seriously reconsider what we drink at home and refer to as coffee.

When you emerged from the melee you got a chance once again to appreciate some more cultural intricacies, like the style of couture expected from such a sophisticated gathering in the land of fashionistas.

The weekend was the real fashion show. The trend, a golf-course chic that would look misplaced in any other country: cerise, electric blue and canary yellow trousers. John Daly’s recent change of threads by replacing the standard drab chinos and plain golf shirt for bright-coloured and gaudy-patterned pants didn’t look quite so bizarre amongst the loud-coloured Italian crowd. Ironically, the Italian professionals were sporting a more demure attire adopting a more global golfing dress sense.

The Carabinieri (Italian police) from a formal-elegance perspective are still head-turners. For those of us not accustomed to the imposing stature that a well-cut policeman’s uniform, coupled with a towering cap and an eye-catching emblem, bring to the fashion parade, their presence was distinguished. With their black suit, and white sash holding a little leather man-bag and their thick red stripe down their trousers they looked interesting if somewhat misplaced in this strange golf land of Royal Park.

It was our annual chance to catch up with the Italian golfers who played the tour in earlier days. Costantino Rocca, Massimo Scarpa, Alberto Binaghi and Silvio Grappasoni all made appearances last week. From playing the seniors tour, commentating and coaching they have kept their links to golf and the tour.

The more I travel in Europe the more fascinating the concept of a United States of Europe seems. Apart from observing the unique traits of a modest crowd of golf spectators in Torino I got a chance to look at how the subculture of the European golf tour behaves.

Most of the players and caddies stayed near the airport in the suburb of Borgaro. With the increasing amount of time we all seem to spend at the course these days, looking for the edge in a very competitive environment, we didn’t seem to have time for much else apart from an evening meal in the vicinity.

One restaurant in particular became unofficial HQ, an innocuous-looking pizzeria which served quality Italian food. The tour invaded the restaurant and set up their obvious enclaves. The English and Scottish tended to be in earliest and set up at their favourite tables, the Swedes not far behind. The Australians had their spot and, of course, the French drifted in en-masse relatively late. Naturally the Spanish were always the last to arrive, in true Iberian fashion.

Having spent a bit more time on the practice range last week I also noticed the same applies there. No matter how you try to break barriers they are firmly entrenched. The one event that seemed to unite the tour’s unofficial eatery last week was Chelsea’s defeat in the Champions league. Barcelona’s late goal had the restaurant cheering in unison. Unsurprisingly it featured prominently in the pink tabloid the next day, smothering the modest lines given to their national golf tournament.