Coming from the seemingly permanently grey UK, the cynical hack in me often struggles to feel sympathy for those working on a beautiful golf course, on a sun-drenched coast. Yet it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for António Castelo, the golf director at Verdura Resort, in Sicily.

Just a short while into a new ‘dream’ job, he lost almost a whole course to a flood of biblical proportion, and, having weathered that storm, was then confronted by the coronavirus pandemic. A lesser man might have seen it as a message from above, but the 46-year-old Portuguese is made of strong stuff.

He was a scratch golfer at 13 and a member of the national junior team, having started playing at just five years old, when his father ran the Dom Pedro Hotel, in Vilamoura. And it was his father – having determined that, despite clearly having raw talent, young António needed a profession behind him – who arranged for him to be educated in the USA.

Castelo junior explained: “I played collegiate golf, took a degree in economics and then, within six-to-eight weeks of getting back to Portugal, I was offered the position of golf director at Vilasol, my first job.

“Initially, I thought I’d go into investment banking for a little bit to see how it goes, but I worked at Vila Sol for three-and-a-half years – also in project management because, at the time, we had a Donald Steel design of nine holes.

“Then I moved to Boavista, in the Western Algarve, where I did the opening of the resort golf course, and some other interesting projects such as a new clubhouse, which we built a few years after the golf course was opened.

“I was there for about nine years, before moving to Troia – a Robert Trent Jones Senior course – where we needed to get the course back into top shape.”

But it was a trip to the annual PGA Show, in Orlando, which, ultimately, led him to land his current position at Rocco Forte’s Verdura Resort. “I was in Orlando, talking about the possibility of doing something internationally – because I’d always been working in Portugal – and Verdura came up. And that’s how it happened!

“So, the following week, in February, I spoke to the GM and visited Verdura, and started in the first week of April, a couple of weeks before we held the European Tour event.”

But, little did he know, nature had a nasty surprise waiting for him.

He recalled: “In November, all hell broke loose and we lost 14 holes! It was quite a storm. The river burst its banks and just went through the golf course. I was there that night. It was about 9.30 in the evening; we’d had a pro-am on the two courses and we were doing the prize giving dinner.

“A colleague called me and said I needed to move my cart because the river had burst its bank, so I went out, grabbed my cart and drove to one of the nearby holes. I drove about 50 metres into the fairway and I couldn’t see it – it was just like a river.”

He managed to evacuate everybody from the clubhouse, as, within 45 minutes the clubhouse was a metre deep in water.

“We were scheduled to close the resort for the season in a couple of weeks, but we ended up closing early. Then it was, basically, working on the clean-up throughout the winter. Everything was devastated.

Castelo and his team were left with 22 holes, from which they created an alternate composite course, which is the one still in use today. Original architect, Kyle Phillips returned to the site in December and began working on the design: whether to reinstate what was there or to change it.

“We decided to go with the lay of the land,” said Castelo, “everything the river had carved out on the course, and to build into the project an extra level of safety for the resort.

“The river heads towards Verdura and, as it approaches the golf course, it runs left, parallel to the course. So it was at that dogleg where it burst its bank.”

He’d been in his role only a few months and, yet, his job description had changed dramatically.

“When the insurance company got involved I became the liaison between all the parties. I did not speak Italian when I arrived so I was trying to get through all that with my rudimentary Italian. It was a crash course in the language and Italian legislation.”

He laughed: “I thought the Portuguese were very bureaucratic but we have a few things to learn from Italy. For example, I would not have thought that, for a rebuild, we would have had to submit for permitting, as if it was a new project. It was down to 12 entities to approve the golf course!”

And then, once things started to get back on track, coronavirus left the world reeling.

“We opened the hotel in June and it exceeded our forecast. We were pleased with the summer, and October was a good month also.

“Through closure, I was looking at what other countries were doing. The safety guidelines for COVID pretty much started with the USGA and from there, each country adapted to their own federation’s needs. We were then putting that in place with our maintenance and operations teams so we could start the year.”

Like many successful individuals down the years, Castelo saw a problem as an opportunity. He said: “For me, the flood event provided an opportunity for improvement. You basically start with a clean slate.

“Obviously, I came in from a country which is very tourism-orientated as far as golf is concerned. So the standards and the quality of the course is normally ahead of what you see in Italy.

“That was one of things I wanted to put in place: improve the look and feel of the golf course. It’s a linksy type of golf course, so we want to improve that, and then the service, and, basically, the whole customer journey.

“With the flood, I had the opportunity to implement 50 per cent almost straight away, which was a good thing. It was a disaster… but with an opportunity for improvement.”

His future following the fulfilment of his ambitions for Verdura may see him packing his bags once more for pastures new. And not ‘home’ to Portugal either.

“My plans are to close off this project and then, most likely, moving to France, because, even though I work in Italy, my home is in France. So I’m always commuting back and forth. More or less every month I head back to Paris – as my wife is French.”

But that may not be for some time yet, as his view of the short-term future of golf is not particularly bright.

He frowned: “In 12 months I see the golf industry largely where it is now. We thought everything was going to improve from the fall (autumn) but it didn’t. And I don’t see it improving over the next year.

“We have no vaccine, and travel restrictions are changing all the time. Any golfer wants to travel, but the current uncertainty prevents them from doing so. Golf remains a people business. A lot of it has to do with relationships, compared to the hotel business, where you can go to a conference and just sit down and talk. Golf is more personal.”

Wherever he ends up, it’s almost inevitable that his first 24 months in the job won’t be as dramatic as that at Verdura. And you can be sure he will be all the better for the experience.