The bloke who carved the Rio Olympics golf course from "rubbish" land says some days have been a nightmare.
"I am still living, I am still breathing. God knows how, but I am still here," Neil Cleverly said on Tuesday.
The Englishman, the superintendent of the newly-created course in Rio's wealthy suburb of Barra da Tijuca, had to drive past protesters who camped outside the site for six months.
He's dealt with allegations of irregularities in environmental impact studies for the course, built in a nature reserve.
Then there's the apartment blocks being constructed adjacent to the course - reportedly built by an influential donor to the election campaign of Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes.
Paes' City Hall committed 60 million reais ($A21.42 million) to create the course ahead of the sport's return to the Olympics for the first time in 112 years.
Standing on the untested course on Tuesday, with workers still building the clubhouse, Cleverly was blunt about his two and a half years of overseeing the course.
"This has been on some days a nightmare and other days a pleasure," he said.
"We have a unique situation here where we have a golf course inside a protected reserve ... this piece of land before we built this course, there was nothing here, it was rubbish."
Asked by AAP what his biggest challenge had been, Cleverly replied: "How long have you got?"
The former British military man, who has worked on golf courses for 26 years in 15 countries, then cited "hellish" costs of "getting things that you need at the right time to do the job".
"You bring anything into Brazil ... it's insanely expensive," he said.
Cleverly is also particularly wary of the cost of golf in Brazil, a country where passion for the sport is rare - there are only two other courses in Rio.
"Golf here is for the wealthy," he said.
"Street level golf doesn't exist.
"And this is where I come in, this is part of my job: I want to bring junior golf to this golf course because without junior golf, golf isn't going to survive in Brazil.
"The challenges will continue because you have got to change the mindset of local people, get them off the street, get the kids out of the favelas ... and bring them to golf.
"If we don't, it's all for nothing."
