As a woman in a man's world on the global professional golf circuit, Antonia Beggs has had to work from the ground up.

The upward turn in reviving the fortunes of the Irish Open in the post-Celtic Tiger years had much to do with her role as championship director. She first assumed this role at the tournament in Royal Portrush in 2012 – the first sold-out event on the PGA European Tour – and she also held at Carton House in 2013, Fota Island in 2014 and Royal County Down last year.

Beggs, who is now head of client relations on the European Tour, has a master’s in economics from Edinburgh University and worked in investment banking with JP Morgan before venturing into the world of sport.

Going from investment banking to work for the PGA European Tour seems like quite a career shift?

“My dad and my brother are investment bankers, and I went straight into banking because that’s all my family knew. I worked in corporate finance and I was really bad at it and all the time I wanted to get into sport.

“I’d played tennis and lacrosse at county and national level [in England]. I was invited to Wimbledon on a corporate ticket and saw all these people whizzing about with walkie-talkies and shades. I found out they were in sports management. I resigned the next day.

“I wrote to all the main sports’ rights holders like the European Tour, IMG, Wimbledon. They all came back: ‘have you got any secretarial qualifications?’. I didn’t. So I went to secretarial college for three months. My father didn’t talk to me for six months, he was so appalled. Then, I got a job with the European Tour. I just worked my way up. I started as a secretary, then staging assistant and then I was a staging manager.

“I’m now in client relations. I had to go to a meeting in Canary Wharf on Monday, a very big investment bank, one that turned me down when I’d applied, and there I was on the top floor in the boardroom with all these investment bankers.

“And I thought, ‘if I’d stayed in investment banking, I would never have got to this level. And I rang my dad and said, ‘you’re not going to believe where I am: I am in Canary Wharf with this company’. He was just like, ‘I am so proud of you, you made the right choice and it all worked out in the end’.”

Did you encounter any obstacles being a woman out on tour?

“When I first started, I was asked, ‘will you be alright? You’ll be away from home for three and four weeks [at a time]’. I replied, ‘I went to boarding school at nine, I think I’ll be alright’.

“I loved it, so I kept on doing it. It’s always been a bit of a challenge, as a woman. When I became a staging director, they would still go to the guys, asking them questions: ‘where do I put this?’ or ‘what do you think?’. They’d go, ‘ask Antonia, she’s the boss’. They couldn’t get their heads around it, but little by little they did and it was fine.

“I remember I was the staging manager for the British Seniors Open at Muirfield [a men-only club]. I had to eat in the kitchen with the staff; the rest of the team could eat in the clubhouse because they were guys. But what was really nice was the guys came and ate with me in the kitchens, rather than leave me on my own.”

Your first Irish Open at Royal Portrush was an unqualified success and ultimately paved the way for the return of the Open Championship (in 2019).

“There was a lot of pressure. Everyone was like, ‘the traffic is going to be terrible’, but if you have the right people around you and work with them . . . standing on the first tee on the Thursday morning, the hairs were standing on the back of my neck. You just go, ‘I am so lucky doing what I do, I love it’.

“The Open would have gone there anyway, although it helped that we showed it could. The R&A are brilliant, they would have been able to do it without the blueprint of what we did, but it was a real honour to be involved because there were so many others with expertise in Northern Ireland and they really embraced that.”

What does the Irish Open mean to you?

“I really care about this tournament. Everyone in Ireland seems to care about golf, for a small nation, and everyone says you punch above your weight. It is not a coincidence the Ryder Cup was here in 2006 and you think of the age of these Irish golfers now, what it did to inspire people. Who knows which eight- or nine-year-old boy coming this week and seeing all their heroes, who knows in 10 years’ time if they will be the next stars?”