Just about to enter his teenage years, young Tom Munt, like many kids of his age, was a mad keen footballer. But following a car crash which damaged his knees, young Munt was faced with a dilemma no one ever wants to face, yet alone someone so young.

“At the time, I went to see a specialist who said they could operate and there would be a 50 per cent chance that my knee would get better, but a 50 per cent chance that it would get worse,” he recalls.

The other option available to him was to live with the damage to his knee, with his specialist warning that he would never play contact sports such as football and rugby, ever again.

“So, after a long conversation, and as a relatively young person, I thought, well, I don’t really want it getting any worse. So, at that point, I gave up contact sport and stopped playing football, and rugby, although I was never any good at that,” he laughs.

A friend of his introduced him to golf, and in his own words “became slightly addicted pretty quickly when I realised, I wasn’t very good at it. Most sports I’ve been able to instantly kick or hit a ball without having to think too much about it, but with golf, it was a revelation that I couldn’t even hit this damn thing… so I got completely hooked at the desire to be better at this game and fell madly in love with it.”

And that fascination with the game, helped shape a career in the golf industry, and an obsession which even saw Munt re-design the clubhouse at March Golf Club – a nine-hole layout in Cambridgeshire – as part of his GCSE project whilst at school.

“Very soon after I started playing, I became fascinated by the strategic design of golf courses, and I suppose the theoretical challenge they posed. From a young age I started drawing golf holes, and redesigning golf holes. I was a junior member at March Golf Club up the road, and I put together a hypothesis on how they could redesign it into an 18-hole golf course through the acquisition of four more fields around it.

“I was probably 15 at the time, so that, I suppose, was the point at which my love of playing the game became a fascination, and with the course particularly.

“As part of my GCSE project, I added tennis courts and built another floor on the clubhouse for a restaurant, so the facilities that are part of the game of golf, and my intrigue with maybe how to do that better was definitely something that I developed when I was quite young.”

This obsession with the business of golf at such a young age appears to have hugely benefited Munt in his later career, but given his fascination with golf course design, did he ever contemplate becoming a golf course architect when he left school?

“No,” he says, “but as part of my degree I did study golf management back in 2000. At the time, The Times newspaper listed the ten most ridiculous degrees in the UK, and number one was the Spice Girls, and number two, was golf club management which I was studying,” he laughs.

“It was hilarious at the time, but it was early on in professional club management, and I was right at the beginning in terms of that qualification.”

During his degree, Munt spent a year working in New York at Blue Heron Pines Golf Club, before returning to the UK with spells at Goodwood, and club management roles at Ely City and Saffron Walden.

Then, in 2018, he became his own boss when he and two business partners, purchased Toft Hotel and Golf Club in Lincolnshire, which as he recollects, seemed like a great idea at the time.

“I saw this opportunity [advertised] and thought, wow this has got everything… a hotel, a function business and a golf course, so I thought I’d could put myself in a position whereby I could make the decisions.

“I started negotiations with the owners and was able to put together a package where we bought it for just 95p, after the business was advertised for £350,000.”

Events didn’t quite transpire the way Munt and his business partners envisaged, and shortly after, reality struck. “Although we bought it for next to nothing, we inherited its problems – warts and all – which was fine.

“We had a plan, and worked through it for a while, but unfortunately, after eight-to-ten months, one of the partners decided he wanted out and was going to take a chunk of money with him.

“So that left me and the remaining partner in a position where we either had to fill the hole or get out relatively quickly,” Munt states, who eventually, after discussing this with his wife, opted for the latter.

“We were less than 12 months into what had been a three-year plan, so it felt unfinished in terms of what it could have been. But nevertheless, within four months we were in lockdown and the person who we sold it to mothballed it two months later.”

With the unknowns of the pandemic about to engulf the world, in late 2019 Munt sought refuse back in his home county of Cambridgeshire, and applied for, and was selected, for the position of general manager at St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club, just down the road from where he lives in Ely.

The club relocated to a brand-new inland links style course in 2010 after vacating their 9-hole parkland course on the outskirts of the market town, and as he explains, a great deal of work – on and off the course – has taken place during his stewardship in charge.

And the parallels between his GCSE project as a tender 15-year-old, and what he is overseeing at St Ives are quite startling.

Firstly, Munt has overseen the expansion of the clubhouse, with new function rooms and a new upstairs lounge bar with a soon-to-open balcony extending off the terrace.

Secondly, last year the club built two padel courts, and thirdly, under the expertise of William Swan of Swan Golf Designs, the club has embarked on a bunker improvement programme which Munt has taken more than a passing interest in.

“It started off as improving the quality of the bunkers, and the playability,” Munt said, adding that “drainage was the key thing. And then really it was a case of the difference in cost between that and going a little bit further. So, we started considering the location and number of bunkers, and the financial difference was relatively small.

“We felt very much that because we were investing heavily in the best quality liners, and the best quality sand, we saw [the project] as a one-off.

“We tasked Will with reviewing the whole thing, and one of his strength’s is that he is one of the few architects I’ve worked with who has the humility to not feel like everything has to be a Swan Signature Design.”

Munt states that although the original Cameron Sinclair design was good, the feedback to the course – and especially how it drained – was mixed.

“Will has been able to deliver a top-quality product whilst being able to see all of the good that was already here,” he says. “He has reinforced a lot of the existing design and on those holes where it feels like there was maybe a missed opportunity, or it hasn’t quite worked, he’s been able to enhance it.”

When Munt took on the GM role six years ago, the club was losing money, despite having cash in the bank from the relocation. And testament to Munt’s vision, is that the club is forecasting for the first time, a cash surplus this year.

Aged 42, Munt currently appears content at St Ives, and although he may have ruled out owning another golf club again in the future, has his sights set on a top club one day.

“I’m sure in my career, there will come a time to wear a jumper with a top 50 golf club logo on it, and to drink coffee and buy myself a labrador,” he smiles. “But really for me, I think the next step will be going somewhere that maybe I feel like I can make a real difference.”