It’s not often you meet a golfer who worked in a slaughterhouse for 10 years. Then again, some of the eye-watering swings you see at your club’s autumn medal probably look as murderous as those thrashing swipes that take place on the abattoir floor. “I wasn’t afraid to get my hands into anything,” recalled Duncan Stewart. “If you didn’t have anywhere to play during the winter you had to do something to bring money in.”

With this bloody background behind him, Stewart should be well equipped for the cut-throat battlegrounds of the European Tour next season. Having finished 10th on the Challenge Tour rankings at the end of a purposeful and profitable campaign, the 32-year-old highlander will take his seat at the top table for the first time in 2017.

It’s been quite a turnaround in fortunes for Stewart. In 2013, he just missed out on promotion from the Challenge Tour but in the quest to find that something extra to push himself forward he ended up reversing down a road to nowhere. “After a decent season, I tried to change my swing in an attempt to hit it longer but, looking back, that was crazy,” added Stewart. “To say I struggled would be an understatement. I should have just stuck to what I was doing. I went for more length and I ended up losing two years of my career. I couldn’t hit the planet with my driver. It’s a mistake a lot of players make. It can be quite intimidating playing with some of these guys who hit it really long. It was my choice to change but it was the wrong one.”

That decision came home to roost over the next two years and the proof was in the stark statistics. In 2014 he plummeted to 115th place on the Challenge Tour rankings. The following year wasn’t much better and he finished in 93rd spot. The 2016 season became a make-or-break one.

“This was my last go at it,” he said. “If I kept going down the way I was then there was no way I was going to keep going. I wasn’t enjoying it and it became a mental thing. Nobody enjoys playing badly. I had a family by that stage too. I was 32 and things were not improving. I had to have a good hard look at myself. You put pressure on yourself and it either goes really badly or it makes you get going. Thankfully I really got going this year.”

A maiden victory on the second-tier circuit in Spain back in May provided a springboard for his promotion push and he backed that up with a tie for fourth in the lucrative Kazakhstan Open and a charging share of sixth in the Foshan Open where he played his last two rounds in 14-under to barge up the field.

“If I’m not ready for the tour now, I’ll never be ready,” said Stewart. “I’ve got to try to hit the ground running, get some early momentum, get some money on the board and take some of the pressure off.”

Stewart will attempt to make an early impression in both December’s Australian PGA Championship and the UBS Hong Kong Open, two events which form part of the 2017 European Tour schedule before the Christmas shut-down.

Before that brace of tournaments, he has the small matter of the World Cup of Golf in Melbourne at the end of this month. He will form one half of Team Scotland alongside his fellow highlander and long-time friend Russell Knox. Stewart is currently ranked at No 310 on the global order. Knox is the world No 19. There have been mutterings and moanings from other, more established Scottish tour players about Knox’s decision to pick his old pal. Nobody likes to miss out on a sun-soaked jaunt down under and the chance to play for £6.5 million after all. Stewart, though, continues to shrug off the bickering.

“Everyone has an opinion and I did notice some of the social media stuff,” he said. “But the rules do say that the top ranked player can choose who he wants and Russell wanted me. The French have done something similar. Victor Dubuisson has picked Romain Langasque (another Challenge Tour graduate) when there were plenty other players above him. The French guys are unhappy too but Victor and Romain get on well. Russ and I are just comfortable with each other too. He asked me to do it in the middle of the season and it gave me the drive to keep going. I didn’t want to be going to a World Cup without a tour card. It’s a great addition to the schedule and we are certainly going down there with a winning attitude.”