Ashley Roestoff is one of a few former professional players who has been able to put the pressure of playing competitive golf behind him.

He has gone on to work in the industry, and he's the general manager of Jackal Creek, one of Gauteng's newer courses. It opened for play in March 2010 as part of a unique golf estate in Honeydew, and, under his guidance, it has grown into a course – and estate – which is increasingly attracting more attention.

'I didn't have a very long career,' he says. 'I started on the Tour when I was 27, and I stopped playing when I was 42. But I did have 99 top-10 finishes, and won like 12 times. So, yeah, it wasn't bad, you know.'

'Not bad' is perhaps underselling himself. His final victory came in the ICL International, the final event of that tournament's illustrious story. It was the Transvaal Open, and was won by the likes of Sid Brews, Bobby Locke and Gary Player before the computer company ICL stepped in with their sponsorship. After that, in addition to Player, the champions included Bobby Cole, Hugh Baiocchi, Dale Hayes, Nick Faldo, Simon Hobday, Tony Johnstone and Nick Price. In fact, Price won it twice in a row in the two years leading up to Roestoff's triumph.

Amongst the players behind Roestoff that year was Kevin Stone, who was runner-up, and he also took a few impressive scalps during his competitive years. The likes of Bobby Lincoln, Gavan Levenson, Justin Hobday, Alan McLean and Chris Williams were runner's-up to him. 'That was a long time ago,' he says modestly.

'The ICL International was a pretty big one in those days, that was still at Zwartkop,' he adds. 'It was the last ICL they ever played as well. Incredible to think it was over 20 years ago.'

He's very conscious of the opportunities the Sunshine Tour creates for local aspiring professionals. 'It's a wonderful sort of learning ground, you know. It's a stepping stone to get to the world tours.

'South African golf is traditionally pretty good and the guys can clearly play all around the world, so most of the time the standard's pretty high, even today. I think it clearly is very good for South African golf.'

His time on the tour is something that formed him, and informs the way he lives his life now. 'The way I carry on my work, my business, my life today… that was a huge influence on my life, on my career.

'And I'm still a member of the Sunshine Tour, albeit a founder member. Which tells me that I'm pretty old.'

He manages to resist the urge to maybe take an opportunity to play in an occasional tournament. 'I think that was one of my big things: I didn't have the urge to play, like, say, Ernie Els and guys like that. I enjoyed playing, but it wasn't a life and death thing for me. And, when I stopped playing on tour, the competitiveness kind of just left me.'

He went the teaching route for a while, but that's no longer what floats his boat. 'I look after my nephew, Cole Stevens, who has just turned pro, but I take my greatest pleasure from running Jackal Creek.

'I think I've come a long way in the industry, you know, from teaching to now running a whole golf estate. I think I've progressed nicely and I enjoy it. I like seeing people getting enjoyment out of the game. I certainly got a lot of enjoyment out of the game and passing that on to other people gives me a great deal of satisfaction.

'I've been here going on 12 years. It was a brand-new golf course, so starting everything from scratch was quite a challenge. But the course is growing in, and we're starting to form some traditions in the club, all of that type of stuff.

'It was hard work to drag Jackal Creek up by the bootstraps. We have a very low budget and doing things without money is always difficult. But we're getting there slowly. We're now in the top hundred and I expect we'll be better this year. We entered for the first time a couple of years back and we've just got better since then.'

For Roestoff, the course, which was designed by Douw van der Merwe in 2010, with changes brought about by Roestoff himself in 2017, has one particular golfing attraction: 'One of the things that attracted me to this course was the similarities in the green design to Augusta, the big sloping greens.

'You have to think about where you're going to hit it on the green, and it places a premium on basing your shots on what's the correct place. You've got to kind of think your way around the course. You can't just smash it, you know.'

His own renovations were pretty substantial, and included some re-routing of the course which has quite a discrepancy in length and strength between the two nines. The first six holes remained unchanged, thereafter the sequence was changed to get the ninth hole close to the clubhouse, so that the halfway house could operate out of the clubhouse. Some holes were lengthened, others shortened.

'I filled in something like 26 bunkers and made it more playable. You know, changed some tees and lengthened some holes and shortened others. Just tried to make it a little more enjoyable and not so challenging. But there are still 76 bunkers in play.'

Now, his life is not consumed by his own play from bunkers, or anywhere else, for that matter. It's more about how others get to enjoy the game.

But there will always be the memory of the player who won every single one of his singles matches in the 1987 Inter-Provincial Championship.

CARL FOURIE | SUNSHINE TOUR | FACEBOOK.COM