Seldom can the mantra that you must speculate to accumulate have been less persuasive than in this past year during the global pandemic.

Golf clubs were not immune from the shivers of financial apprehension that convulsed industries throughout the world in March 2020 and so it came as no surprise to Anthony Roberts when his offer to become club manager at Ely City Golf Club that month was put on hold.

Scroll forward just over a year and Roberts is not only in situ at the Cambridgeshire track, but Ely are reaping the benefits of the 52-year-old being able to convince them to invest £300,000 in their future.

The clubhouse has undergone a £180,000 refurbishment and an additional £120,000 was spent on course machinery, two bold moves that, along with strong marketing through local media, Facebook and other social platforms, have led to them being in an unprecedented situation of having a waiting list for membership – a membership that grew by 162 in the months after Roberts finally took up the post in June of last year.

The UK Government had allowed golf courses to re-open by the time Wirral-born Roberts arrived in Cambridgeshire and he accessed quickly the need to improve things both inside the clubhouse and out on the course.

“There was no restaurant in the clubhouse, and there clearly had been no investment in the clubhouse for 20-odd years,” he says. “The course wasn’t particularly up to scratch, the manpower on the course wasn’t right, and so there was lots to do.

“But everybody was being encouraged to socially distance and get as much exercise as you can and the best sport for that is golf, isn’t it?”

The strong push to increase membership bore fruit, generating a considerable sum that Roberts wasted no time in earmarking for expenditure on the clubhouse and course machinery.

He recalls: “That £120,000 investment [on the machinery] was a brave and bold move, and just recently, because we were closed for three months during the most recent COVID situation, I was able to say to the club, ‘let’s use this time wisely, we’ve got some money in the bank and let’s spend that wisely, let’s refurbish the clubhouse’.

“We have successfully done that during the last lockdown. Convincing people to spend £180,000 when we don’t know what’s going to happen was difficult, but fortunately I sold it to [the board] well. Two of the directors were immediately on board and there are only six of us anyway and it has turned out well.

“All the members who joined last year renewed and now we have got a waiting list, which is just unprecedented. We have been able to push the joining fee a little bit higher, and we have got a brand-new clubhouse and new course machinery. It’s a great story really. In less than ten months we have used the opportunity to invest, with the help of local grants and taking advantage of Barclays’ Bounceback Loan.”

Ely’s trust in their new club manager was evident from the moment they appointed him given his insistence during his interview that he would expect to be able to do his job without interference.

“One of the things I did say to them before I started was that I was happy to take the job, but they must let me manage. I am not going to be micromanaged because it just doesn’t work. I asked for autonomy to do what is right and to improve the golf club so, thankfully, I have done that and it has all turned out well, touch wood.”

Roberts’ career in golf began at 16 when he decided to turn professional, but it was not as a Tour player that he saw his future. “I never hit it far enough,” he explains. “I couldn’t consistently birdie the par-5s or drive the short par-4s, which all of my peers could. Also, I never did practise that well.”

However, he did take his first steps as an assistant club professional at a world-renowned tournament venue, Royal Liverpool. Also known as Hoylake, it has held both the men’s and women’s Open Championships as well as the Walker Cup and the Amateur Championship. “It was an incredible place to start, but it’s only looking back that you realise ‘that’s a decent start, that is’,” he laughs.

He would move on to Wallasey before joining Belton Woods Hotel, a then new and De Vere-owned golf resort near Grantham in Lincolnshire where, after a year or so, he was appointed head professional at the age of 22.

“I don’t know for a fact that I would’ve been the youngest head professional in the country at the time, but there can’t have been too many 22-year-olds that were head professionals,” he says, “albeit it wasn’t my shop, I was just managing it on behalf of De Vere hotels.

“Obviously working for a hotel chain as successful as De Vere, who had The Belfry at that time [where he worked during Ryder Cup week in 1993], you got more into the managerial side of things than a normal club professional would do.

“I was administrating competitions, looking after the membership, creating databases, learning about the importance of marketing, membership retention and all that side of it.

“Because it was a very big enterprise we were very well trained and I enjoyed that side of things, which is why I probably ended up being a club manager, secretary, or whatever you want to call them.”

He left Belton Woods in 1999 for his last role as a head professional, at Ellesmere Port Golf Centre, before eventually heading into the world of club management.

“I didn’t enjoy teaching, I didn’t enjoy working in the pro shop,” he recalls. “I did enjoy selling memberships, marketing, organising competitions, that type of thing really. I also got interested in agronomy, I’ve always had very good friends who are head greenkeepers.”

Chiltern Forest near Wendover in Aylesbury was his first secretarial role at a golf club. “It was an 18-hole, nice little golf course, and I took over at a time when golf clubs were struggling for memberships,” he says. “I used my marketing and data capture skills that I had learned from De Vere, that type of thing, and increased the membership at Chiltern Forest, increased society visits. I did a good job.”

So much so that he was head-hunted for the same position at Bath, and during his time there helped the club host the golf discipline for the Special Olympics in 2013.

“The Special Olympics is for the mentally disabled, and I was quite prominent in making that happen at Bath,” says Roberts. “It was rewarding to be involved in that event, particularly the ceremony at the end where they got the medals. It was just like in the Olympics, so that was very humbling to be involved in.”

Ely members will have become used to seeing a lot of self-confessed workaholic Roberts, including out on the course. Many club secretaries shy away from being seen playing their own course for fear they will be seen as shirking. Not Roberts.

“I disagree with the old-school mentality,” he insists. “I would encourage every secretary and every manager to be seen playing as much as possible,” stressed Roberts.

“I don’t know how you can handle the greens staff if you’re not playing the course regularly or give them feedback without playing the golf course. That’s just me, that’s my style.”