Just 24 hours before I was due to depart the UK to visit Sicily, news broke that Mount Etna had ‘erupted’. As ever, in a news cycle that thrives on dramatic footage captured by eyewitnesses, within seconds of the event, clips of an admittedly pretty scary volume of ash cloud and gas billowing out from one of the main craters were being aired across numerous social media platforms and TV news channels.
Having viewed the images more closely, I would have called it more of a ‘cough’ than an eruption – a ‘Pyroclastic Flow’ to give it its correct technical term – but that doesn’t generate as many clicks on the Daily Mail’s algorithms.
Given that the golf resort I was due to stay in was less than 15 miles from said volcano, my first thought on seeing the news was ‘Is the trip still on?’ My second thought, wearing my all-action journalist’s hat, was, ‘If it is still on, are we more or less likely to witness a second ‘eruption/cough’ so soon after this one’.
A series of rapid fire messages on the trip’s WhatsApp group soon allayed any fears that our visit might have to be postponed, as it turned out that the ash cloud, such that it was, was blowing in the opposite direction of Catania airport, so there was a minimal chance of disruption to incoming flights, while the golf resort’s manager said that they were so used to Mount Etna letting off steam that they barely give a moment’s thought to dissuading guests from travelling when things get a bit rumbly.
Disaster tourism is clearly a growth market, as was witnessed when the Icelandic volcano that even the locals can’t pronounce went all tectonic on us last year, so higher levels of seismic activity often result in a surge in bookings.
Potential tragedy avoided, it was thus with a great deal of excitement that after an uneventful two-and-a-half-hour flight from Gatwick, we landed in Catania, a coastal town located two-thirds of the way up Sicily’s eastern seaboard. Safely on board a minibus, we kept our eyes glued to Etna’s snow-capped craters as we travelled the hour-long route that circumnavigates its lower slopes as we drove to our destination, Il Picciolo Golf Resort & Spa, which is located in the long shadow of Europe’s most active volcano.
RECENT RENOVATIONS
While part of Il Picciolo’s appeal will, of course, be its dramatic location – who, after all, doesn’t want to have a natural wonder that has the capacity to vaporise the locality in an instant serve as a backdrop to a tricky 20-foot downhill par putt? – it is the resort’s excellent hotel, renowned hospitality, and fine golf course that has been attracting travellers to this picturesque and tranquil northeastern corner of Sicily ever since it opened in 1989.
Having changed hands five years ago, when it was bought by Sicilian-born brothers Andrea and Francesco Scrofani, the resort has undergone a series of significant renovations, with €18 million having spent across the venue in various stages, starting with the clubhouse, before moving onto the golf course, the hotel and most recently, a collection of private villas.
The entire refurbishment has only just been completed, with the boutique-style 44-bedroom hotel recently becoming part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, a portfolio of independent, upscale hotels and resorts that are selected by Hilton for their unique character and distinctive experiences that benefit from Hilton’s global reservation system and popular loyalty programme.
In addition to the hotel accommodation, the resort offers a further 49 rooms spread across a mixture of apartments and villas that overlook the golf, and a further six rooms in the clubhouse. Many rooms feature private verandas looking directly out to Mount Etna and a vineyard that encircles the resort, giving it a feeling of peace and tranquillity.
WINING, DINING & SPA-ING
The resort boasts a wide range of bars and restaurants, with our group enjoying magnificent lunches on the clubhouse terrace, where plates of cured meats, freshly cooked pasta dishes and seafood specialities were paired with some very tasty local wines.
The bar was raised up a level at La Ghiandaia restaurant, where the head chef served up a stunning six-course tasting menu featuring a mouth-watering selection of locally sourced dishes that highlighted the magnificent range of produce that Sicily has to offer.
A comprehensive line-up of leisure amenities includes two outdoor pools, complete with sun loungers and day beds, and a bar for snacks or a sunset aperitif. For indoor relaxation, the 950-square metre spa offers a heated pool with hydromassage, a Finnish sauna and steam room, and a Turkish bath. The citrus fruits of Sicily are key elements for guests to experience through spa offerings incorporated into treatments and massages offered in six private cabins.
CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF
But what of the golf, I hear you ask? It should, at this point, be noted that Sicily is not overly blessed with golf courses. At the time of writing there are just eight full-size layouts on offer, with the headline act being Verdura, the five-star Rocco Forte-owned venue, a former host of the DP World Tour’s Sicily Open, which is located on the western coast, some 280km due west of Il Picciolo.
Borgo di Luce I Monasteri, which also boasts a decent 18-holer, is 150km due south, so be prepared to do a fair amount of driving if you want to play more than one course on your trip.
Il Picciolo’s 18-hole track, which first opened in 1989, enjoys a pedigree in Sicilian golfing circles, with its 5,645-metre, par-72 course having hosted four events on the Ladies European Tour between 1995 and 2011, and the Sicilian Seniors Open in 2010. Despite its relative short length, the course’s challenge lies in finding the narrow fairways, many of which are separated by long-since solidified lava fields, and then hitting the smallish greens, many of which feature significant slopes.
TIGHT FAIRWAYS & GNARLY ROUGH
The only course on the island that hasn’t been sown with Bermuda grass, Il Picciolo demands precision rather than power, and the driver, although a useful tool in the right hands, will barely be needed if you want to keep some seriously big numbers off the card as you hack about in the extremely gnarly rough. Boasting five par fives and the same number of par threes, the holes are tight and tricky with plenty of twists and turns, water and out of bounds to negotiate.
The round gets off on to what looks like a benign start, with a modest, 320-yard par-4 that turns gently to the left, with a decent drive leaving a wedge into a flattish green. However, a tee shot that found a fairway bunker resulted in a gouged lay-up, followed by an over-hit approach to a back bunker and a three-putt, triple-bogey seven that would have ended my hopes of winning the club championship there and then had I been a member and playing in it.
The bunkers, it should be noted, have recently been filled with new sand, and while they are lovely to look at, they’ve arguably been over-filled, which can lead to ‘fried egg’ lies for balls which seemingly rolled harmlessly into them. The sand will settle down at some point, but for now they present harsh hazards from which more than one blow was often required to extricate yourself.
BLOW BY BLOW
The first of the course’s quintet of short holes follows, with this being the easiest of them according to the stroke index, with a 140-yard slightly downhill shot to a large green protected by bunkers either side of the putting surface resulting in no serious damage to the scorecard.
The third is a short, downhill par 4 which the biggest of hitters might be tempted to take on, but with out-of-bounds down the left and a row of trees protecting the right, a bunt down the middle and a short iron in seemed like the more sensible course of action.
There’s an unusual run of three par-5s from the 6th to the 9th, with only the par-3 8th breaking up the unrelenting slog. The 7th is arguably the best of the bunch, a long, sweeping 530-yard hole that turns not once, but twice to the right, circumnavigating a rocky terrace all the while climbing until you eventually reach the promised land that is the green.
The back nine get off to a strong start with the towering and visibly smoking Mount Etna providing a stunning backdrop to a 200-yard par-3 that requires an equally towering long iron or hybrid to reach a raised green where anything hit short will roll back some distance.
The par-4 11th measures 470 yards off the tips is rated the hardest hole on the course, and with water all the way down the right side of the narrow fairway from 200 yards into the edge of the green, it is not hard to see why. A one-putt bogey here, after missing the green with my third, felt like a moral victory of sorts.
The par-4 13th – one of several dogleg holes on the card – requires a drive to the corner of the leg, leaving a short wedge into a green surrounded by rocky outcrops; while the 360-yard, par-4 14th is another dogleg, this one requiring a well-placed drive to avoid a lake that juts menacingly into the fairway between the tee and the green.
The 15th is the final par-3, and the shortest, measuring just 100 yards from the back tee, requiring little more than a flick with a gap wedge. But with the green some 30-40 yards above your feet, you won’t know how well you’ve fared until you hike up the hill. I went slightly long and mysteriously never saw my ball again.
STRONG FINISH
The closing trio of holes feature two fairly routine par 4s, both of which require supremely straight driving to avoid having to chip out sideways, while the 18th is a suitably swashbuckling finish, with the 550-yard, par-five requiring right-handers to hit a raking draw around the corner of a dogleg, still leaving 300 yards to a green protected by a large front left bunker.
Second time around, the course was easier to strategize in terms of shot selection, but it was no easier to execute those shots given the limitations of my skill and the heavy punishment dished out for less-than-perfect shots, of which there were many. It’s a course that may frustrate some, but if golf was easy, it wouldn’t keep us coming back for more, and I would certainly would have enjoyed a third attempt should my supply of balls – and time – allowed.
In addition to the golf course, Il Picciolo also boasts a driving range, two practice chipping and bunker areas, and a practice putting green, while there is also an indoor studio for club fittings, lessons and simulator golf.
With the elephant in the room being a bloody great volcano on your doorstep, it will come as no surprise that any trip to Il Picciolo will involve some sort of Mount Etna-based activity.
Ours involved a hike around the middle slopes with a knowledgeable guide, who showed us plenty of impressive sights largely featuring the destruction that can be caused by millions of tons of hot magma rolling down a steep slope over thousands of years, but there any number of different ways of experience Etna’s power and majesty, from trekking to mountain biking, motor biking to rafting, to horse riding and helicopter chartering.
The concierge at Il Picciolo are happy to organise a wide variety of off-site trips for guests, including all of the above, as well as visits to local vineyards
, as we also did, where you can have a guided tour of an estate and the behind-the-scenes production processes before enjoying a tutored tasting to discover the secrets behind the region’s unique viticulture.
COASTAL TREASURES
There are also countless nearby towns and villages to visit, including to the seaside town of Taormina, a TikTokers paradise, where every street and every view is worth a reel in itself. With Mount Etna puffing away in the background, the town is framed beautifully by the Mediterranean on one side and rows of houses, apartments, churches, and hotels tittering on the vertiginous slopes on the other.
There’s a stunning 2,300-year-old Greek amphitheatre sitting out on a promontory overlooking the bay that plays hosts to numerous concerts and dramatic performances, while an evening stroll down the Corso Umberto, a narrow, tiled street filled with shops, restaurants and bars, is also not to be missed. Then there’s Isola Bella, a tiny island connected to the mainland by a strip of beach that disappears with the tide. It’s a picture at its most postcard-like, and it’s no wonder that the makers of murder mystery drama The White Lotus chose Taormina as a location to film its second series, using the Four Seasons Hotel San Domenico as its stunning centrepiece.
GODFATHER CONNECTIONS
Out next stop, sitting high above Taormina was Savoca, a small medieval town that also has a big screen connection after it was put on the world stage in scenes from The Godfather, the first film in Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy charting the rise and fall of mafia boss Michael Corleone. Our guide showed us the places that are now synonymous with the film, including Bar Vitelli, where Michael first meets his future wife Apollonia’s father and asks for her hand in marriage, and the church where Michael and Apollonia eventually get married.
Although I was not nerdily knowledgeable about the finer details of the film, Savoca is certainly a beautiful spot, and our group was soon sharing YouTube clips from The Godfather so that we could get a better understanding of how little had changed in this village since those scenes were shot over 50 years ago. Many locals appeared as extras in the film, and the woman who played Apollonia’s mother, who is now in her 80s and still lives in the village, was happy to chat to us about working with Al Pacino and the crew.
So, whether you’re there to tackle its lava-fringed fairways, unwind in its luxurious spa, indulge in exceptional food and wine, or explore the island’s dramatic volcanic landscape and charming coastal towns, Il Picciolo is not just a golf destination —it’s a gateway to the heart and soul of eastern Sicily.
For bookings and enquiries about golf breaks to Picciolo Etna Golf Resort & Spa, visit www.ilpiccioloetnagolfresort.com or email info@ilpiccioloetnagolfresort.com
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