Glasgow golfer Andrew McArthur insists he will be more equipped for frontline duty on the European Tour when he returns to the main circuit next season.

But the former Scottish Amateur champ admitted he could have been forced to give up the Tour life after the financial hardships began to hit home.

McArthur earned promotion back to the top table by finish 12th on the Challenge Tour rankings this season but a struggling start to the previous campaign left him thinking about the unthinkable.

McArthur, 36, has benefitted from crucial financial support from Team Scottish Hydro but even with that backing, the rigours of life at the coal face of the professional scene during a testing 2014 left him with plenty to ponder.

He said: “I certainly had discussions about my future. My wife, Laura who was pregnant at the time, was getting quite stressed about it and understandably so. I think she said something like ‘you’re just burying your head in the sand here and pretending it’s not happening’. I knew the situation was getting worse and worse. It was costing me £1,000 to £1,500 a week.”

McArthur managed to make ends meet with an upturn in form and even pulled off a victory in the Slovakian Challenge that summer.

In 2015, McArthur has performed well on the Challenge Tour, as well as the European Tour events he has gained entry to, and the Lanark-born golfer is looking forward to 2016.

He added: "You could perhaps call it maturity but I look it more as an understanding of where I'm at.

“In 2010, my first year on the main Tour, I felt I had to make a distinct improvement to be successful and ended up costing myself daft shots all the time due to taking on silly shots. This year, I've played in main tour events and felt much more relaxed because I wasn't trying to do anything I wasn't capable of.

“I'm not going to try and be Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods. Some weeks my game will be good enough, some weeks it won't but I feel better equipped this time.”