"The golf courses are a source of employment and investments that can help improve our country economy through a novel type of tourism.  Just like what has previously happened in countries like Portugal, Spain and the Canary Islands, South Africa and Argentina”. It is with this enthusiasm that Germana Zanardi, a marketing expert and a professional golf teacher since 1999, describes the plan to increase tourism in Tuscany.

Former Italian National golf team champion, she won between 1988 and 1995 four national titles and several tournaments abroad. Today, Germana is committed to setting up a network between Tuscany's golf courses. The passion for a sport that she defines as “educational both for adults and children, an experience that exercises at the same time your techniques and your virtues and that can give you ecstasy as well as sacrifice” drove her all around Italy to find the perfect spot where she could turn her dream into reality. The search brought her to Maremma where, by encouraging golf within local schools and by offering promotional courses to beginners,  she is succeeding in introducing golf into the local culture, opening up endless opportunities to diversify the leisure package that the area has traditionally offered.  A dynamic woman, endowed with managerial skills, she runs this project inspired, almost mystically, by the idea of making these experiences accessible to everyone: "Golf is a sport that rewards those who respect the opponents, that combines relaxation and challenge, that helps people to accept their own limits and that encourages better human relationships, away from the alienation of the city. It also helps finding inner peace by feeding the spirit with silence and natural beauty. It teaches the respect for the environment".  Besides, she added "there is also room for business, as golf courses provide a powerful enabling environment for testing business relationships. Unlike the US, where this is already common practice, Italian companies just started to pick up golf locations for conferences or meetings or to offer to their employees golf week-ends or golf holiday packages as incentives. The demand might rise in the next few years and if it does, as we hope,  we will be there to match it, together with all those who will decide to join us in this project".

from "Il Giornale" 30th october 2007

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