For 47-year-old Stephen Dundas, golf has afforded him a lifestyle he could never have imagined when growing up in the middle of Glasgow.

In 1992, Dundas was crowned British amateur champion at Carnoustie when aged just 18, with victory earning him an invitation to The Masters at Augusta, and the Open Championship at Royal St George’s the following year.

Staying in the Crow’s Nest at Augusta National, Dundas recalls waking up the first morning of the tournament and literally laughing for a minute as realisation dawned on the teenager just where he was, and what he had achieved.

Scores of 78 and 83 at Augusta resulted in Dundas not making the cut at The Masters, and although he fared slightly better at The Open – finishing +13 for his opening two rounds – a career away from playing would soon beckon for the affable Scotsman.

“I worked at Loch Lomond for three years in-between trying to play, which never quite worked out,” he explained. “So, in 2000, I moved to Qatar to coach the national team and stayed in the Middle-East for three years before returning to the UK to take-up a position at Reigate Hill in Surrey.

“I was the head professional, managing the shop and also taught quite a lot,” recalls Dundas, who in 2007, appeared to have a pre-crash epiphany.

“I’m not saying that I predicted the crisis or anything, but I just had a feeling that doing what I was doing, with the mad hours that I was working, I wasn’t going to go any further. I couldn’t charge any more for lessons, and in reality, I needed another one or two of me to do what I was doing so I started to look for different positions.

“A few years earlier, the PGA had started to recognise different levels of PGA professionals, so I got into their education programme and became an advanced PGA professional,” said Dundas.

And in 2008, just around the time when the global financial crisis struck, Dundas relocated to Russia to take-up the position of director of golf at the newly opened Pestovo Golf and Yacht Club after seeing the role advertised on the PGA website.

Owned by Golf Estate – a Russian company controlled by Viktor Khristenko, a former Russian Minister of Industry and Trade, and his wife Tatyana Golikova – Pestovo is one of three luxury golf resorts owned by the group, all of which have been influenced by Dundas.

“The original idea for the job was to spend two years at Pestovo setting everything up; two years at Forest Hills – which is the other course in Moscow – and then two years in St Petersburg at Peterhof Golf Club. Then the crisis hit, and I stayed much longer at Perstovo.

“It was exciting and [Russia] was a new country for golf. It was a chance for me to go there and stamp my own personality on golf.”

Dundas still retains an involvement in Pestovo – albeit from a distance due to COVID travel restrictions – and was tasked with putting “feelers” out when Golf Estate sought to broaden their golf portfolio outside of Russia.

And where better to look than Spain?

“I was tasked with finding the appropriate golf course to buy and looked at probably eight or nine properties throughout Spain, with some in Madrid and some in Barcelona.

“In the beginning it wasn’t specific in terms of where [the course] had to be in Spain, and to be honest, there wasn’t really any that we looked at that were really of interest. But once we found that San Roque was available, it was a no-brainer just because of the history of the club.”

Once the jewel in the crown of golf in Sotogrande, San Roque had fallen on hard times in recent years, and was in desperate need of fresh investment and direction.

Formerly the home of the Domecq sherry family, San Roque is set within 340 acres of Andalusian countryside with cork oaks dominating the landscape. The club opened in 1991 with Dave Thomas designing the original ‘Old’ course, and a second ‘New’ course designed by Perry Dye was added in 2002.

And with Seve Ballesteros as a former chairman of the club, at the turn of the millennium, San Roque was arguably the standout golf and real estate destination in Spain.

But in the past decade the club had began to falter, with the course and the surrounding real estate looking tired and unkempt, prompting the club membership to looking into the possibility of buying the club.

Speaking from the newly-renovated clubhouse, Dundas said: “My first ever meeting here was in December 2018 at the time with the general manager.

“I was told then that the members were trying to buy the club, so I met with the captain of the golf club in January 2019 and one of the guys who was helping with the buyout process.

“With our golf management company from Russia, there was always going to be a degree of scepticism. It’s natural,” admits Dundas. “But we had a meeting with the members in April 2019 and explained everything that we were going to do, and what the plan was for the club, and we’ve delivered on every point that we said we’d fix.”

And fix it he has, starting with the Old Course and the clubhouse.

“The whole thing has been completely renovated,” he states. “I mean we stripped everything back to just the trees, so just the routing basically. We’ve taken out 29 bunkers, three lakes, two streams and 18 hectares of turf and replaced the turf with mulch.

“When you play it, it’s not the same golf course. It’s the same routing for sure, and you’ll probably still recognise the holes, but it’s a different golf course.

“This was the first time that I’ve done this sort of thing, and I was heavily involved in the design as well. We kind of went for a very minimalist look, and now only have 40 bunkers which isn’t a lot. But the bunkering is very strategic and from a maintenance perspective, everything we’ve done on the golf course is about sustainability.

“So, by having less bunkers, less water and less grass to maintain it’s much more sustainable to keep the playing surfaces at the right level.”

But its not just the course that has undergone a transformation, it’s the entire ethos of the club which Dundas describes as being of “affordable quality” and accessible to all.

“San Roque will always be open,” stresses Dundas. “In fact, from day one we banned the use of the word ‘exclusive’ absolutely. It’s the great thing about this area as the golf clubs out here are all very different in terms of the people that go to them, and the type of members that they have.

“Our club is very open, and it’s not just about golf. Everyone’s welcome to come and enjoy the clubhouse and restaurant.

“Ok we have 550-600 members which might allow less availability for green fees, but we’ll never get to the stage where we’re saying, ‘No green fees or no visitors.’

“And by definition our membership is very transient anyway, so you’re never going to have 600 of them here all at one time.”

And it’s this mindset, coupled with the financial investment that will probably see San Roque prosper at the second time of asking.