When, in 2015, this 72-year-old Scot retired as chief executive of the Royal and Ancient (R&A) - the body that runs the Open Championship and governs the sport worldwide in conjunction with the United States Golf Association (USGA) - he told Kingdom Magazine: "I don’t want people to think I have left a legacy."

That is not a statement you hear from a lot of Olympic folk.

Dawson insisted at that time: "It’s all about the R&A and what we do." Five years on he parries once again when it is suggested to him that his work in shaping and seeing through golf’s bid to return to the Olympics in 2016, after a 112-year absence from the Games, could be seen as, well, a legacy.

"What I meant by that in 2015 was that it’s not down to one person - and that is still the case," he tells insidethegames. "We don’t have a cult of personality."

Before he took up his position within the IGF in December 2010, Dawson had spent a considerable time shaping the argument for golf to return to the Games for the first time since 1904, and he played his part in presenting the bid at the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) 13th Congress in Copenhagen in 2009.

"There were a lot of years putting the work in and getting everyone in golf onside about the bid before we actually presented it in Copenhagen and won approval," Dawson says.

"We didn’t have an International Federation in the same sense as many sports, and we used a body that was called the International Golf Federation and brought into that the whole of the professional game, which was essential to a successful bid because the IOC wanted the top professionals playing in every Games, just as they do in every sport.

"So we had to almost re-create the IGF, and I was the first President of that re-created body, starting in 2010."

And he still doesn’t see any of this as a legacy?

"Well I do, of course, but many people were part of that," Dawson responds. "And then of course we had a seven-year build-up to Rio, and a key moment in that was hiring Antony Scanlon to be executive director of the IGF.

"He brought with him a wealth of Olympic experience. We certainly knew how to put golf events together but didn’t know the Olympic world particularly well, and hiring Anthony was absolutely key to getting everything done that we have managed to do.

"The way the IGF does things is draw capacity from the big organisations in golf - be it the PGA Tour, the European Tour, the Royal & Ancient of St Andrews, the USGA - to get things done as needed, and those organisations, which are all represented on the IGF Board, have been very willing to supply expertise as needed. It’s a very good system."

When the green light shone for golf to return to the Olympic arena there was one particularly troubling green problem, however.

"Putting in the qualification criteria using world rankings and putting the competition together is something we do in golf every week of the year," Dawson explains.

"We would have been ready to flick the switches after Copenhagen, except that the very strange thing I suppose was that Rio had been voted as the successful host city before golf was voted in. And therefore Rio’s bid for the Olympics didn’t include a golf course.

"So we actually had to review the courses that were available in Rio, which unfortunately weren’t suitable for top-level professional competition, and we had to build a golf course, from scratch."

This was accomplished, eventually, after American golf course architect Gil Hanse had been hired for the task of creating the Olympic venue at the Reserva de Marapendi.

"To design the course and get it built with many, many hiccups along the way down there was a major achievement," Dawson recalls. "We put a good course together and in the end, despite the Zika virus and everything, we had a very successful Olympic competition.

"We kept getting delays, delays, delays in the course of construction, for many reasons - we had disputes about ecology, disputes about ownership, getting the right machinery and the right people in to do the work. And it got tighter and tighter. But I always thought we’d make it. And we did."

After all this, to hear that many of the world’s leading players, including the top four of Australia’s Jason Day, Americans Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth and Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, were not planning to take part was, as Dawson put it at the time, "certainly not helpful".

Many of the players, including McIlroy, cited concerns over the ongoing Zika virus epidemic, although Carlos Nuzman, President of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, begged to differ, commenting: "They tried to blame Zika, but the media have shown that they are not coming because there's no prize money… Zika is much worse in Florida than in Brazil, and golfers are playing in Florida."

Australia’s two-time British Open winner Greg Norman told The Sunday Times pre-Olympics: "There’s a disaster building. Google the name of it and you will see that it is located on what was a swamp.

"There are problems with pollution, with the perimeter property. You’re much more exposed to the possibility of a mosquito bite there than if you are competing inside the stadium.

"I hope that is their reasoning and it’s not just because they fancy a break. I fear now that golf might not survive beyond its two-Games cycle. The reputation of the sport looks like it is going to get a black eye over Rio."

McIlroy compounded the IGF’s discomfiture by subsequently claiming at a press conference: "I'll probably watch the Olympics, but I'm not sure golf will be one of the events I watch.” After being asked which events he would watch, the 27-year-old stated: "Probably the events like track and field, swimming, diving, the stuff that matters."

A difficult period, then, for Dawson and his compadres?

"It was," he confirms. "First of all, full credit to the women, who turned out pretty much 100 per cent to play, which was wonderful. There’s no hiding the fact that we were short of some top male players. Tennis had the same problem when they got back in the Games in the 1980s. I don’t think Pete Sampras played for example.

"But yes there was the Zika virus, there were scheduling issues. Professional golfers have very tough schedules, they play many, many weeks of the year. But I think in the end having Justin Rose win the gold medal and then be such an ambassador for golf has caused many of them to say to me, 'Oh, we got that wrong, wish we’d played, looking forward to Tokyo'.

"To have Justin and Henrik Stenson, that year’s Open winner, and Matt Kuchar on the podium was pretty impressive."

In the end, eight of the 15 top-ranked men's players took part. Regarding McIlroy’s much-publicised comments about the Olympics, Dawson adds with a laugh: "Yes; he said that about the Ryder Cup too and then retracted." McIlroy confirmed last October that he planned to compete at the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Scheduling was also an issue in 2016 which Dawson, at the time, said would be looked into. It has been.

"One of the great things about golf being an Olympic sport is that it has brought together and acted as a catalyst for the big organisations in the game to have to come together and discuss many matters, the schedule being one of them," he says.

"There has been huge co-operation shown by all of them to make a space for golf in the Olympics, which has caused some of the Tours to have to go to sponsors and make decisions that are not entirely popular with those sponsors, and that’s big stuff.

"But they’ve gone to it with a will and got it done. And here we are again having got it settled for 2020 and having to do it again for 2021. Nothing is easy - but we get there!"

Asked how critical the Rio 2016 competition success was to golf’s continuation as an Olympic sport, Dawson responds: "I think it was hugely important. And let’s just say it worked out very well. 

"I wouldn’t like to speculate what would have happened if it hadn’t gone well. It did. And all the metrics around golf in Rio were strong in terms of social media and TV numbers, and that added to the success.

"And of course the prospect of a Games in a golf-loving country like Japan is something to look forward to."

The take-up in Rio in terms of spectators was around 60 per cent. Tokyo, if it goes ahead as planned, will be very different.

"Tokyo 2020 golf was sold out I believe," Dawson says. "I would expect big numbers there. As for Paris 2024 - the Ryder Cup was held at venue where the Olympic competition will be held, and it was mobbed. I think it will be again."

In the run-up to the Rio 2016 competition Gary Player, winner of nine major championships in his illustrious career and present at the age of 80 as South Africa’s team captain, described the format of the competition as "a grave mistake", saying: "All sports in the Olympics are fast, you don't want medal rounds that are slow, you want matchplay or foursomes, something you can play in under four hours."

Dawson explains there were two main reasons why strokeplay was introduced as the Games format.

"Gary was not involved in the build-up to this and so perhaps didn’t have all the facts at his fingertips," he says. "When we made a bid to the IOC to get golf into the Olympics, two things were made very clear to us. They wanted the format in the Olympic Games that was prevalent in the sport, not some fancy format for the Olympics. And strokeplay is the way that golf largely determines its major champions.

"They also made it clear, and this is maybe a subject of ongoing discussion, that they don’t want team sports that are simply the addition of individual performances. For example, football is a team sport, where everyone interacts. It’s not just the addition of performances, although some sports in the Olympics are still like that and have been for a while.

"So we didn’t have the option in the bidding process of putting a team format together. And Tours didn’t want to stop play for two weeks for the Olympics, they wanted to stop for one week. So there wasn’t time for a separate team event."

Asked if he sees that changing, Dawson responds: "We would like to try to find a way, potentially, of getting at some kind of team format as part of the golf process. We would like to use the individual performances in some sort of additive way to create a team event as well.

"It would simply be the addition of the performances of the individuals, adding together their gross scores. There have been other formats where that has been done - at the Canada Cup and the World Golf Championships. So it’s not by any means new to golf.

"A personal view is that I would like to see that add to the competitive landscape of the Games - but that’s a matter for others now. I’m sure those discussions will go forward."

Would this entail additional medals if it comes to pass?

"I would hope so, but you are asking me things I cannot say," Dawson responds. "These are just my ideas, golf’s ideas, and we are very happy to be part of the Games as it is and we are determined to be a contributing member of the Olympic family and to be supportive. So we have our views about how golf should be but we do understand what the pressures are on the organisation of the Games.

"But these are very much embryonic thoughts. It’s not anything you are going to see happen very quickly, if at all."

On January 1, Dawson’s mantle as IGF President will pass to 10-time major winner Annika Sörenstam, with the 50-year-old Swede becoming only the second female President of a Summer Olympic International Federation after Marisol Casado, who has just been voted into a fourth term at the head of World Triathlon.

"Anikka is a very respected figure in golf, an absolutely top player in her day who has moved on to being a great ambassador for the game," Dawson says. "I think she was just the perfect choice. The gender issue I can honestly say wasn’t that strong a thing. It was just - who’s going to do well here? And Annika shone bright, and I’m delighted she’s willing to do it.

"We do have a very strong Board and the President is, if you like, the figurehead of golf facing up to the Olympic Movement. Most matters are Board decisions, and Anthony Scanlon is still there with his team of course."

Fate, in the form of the Second World War, may have denied Dawson an earlier Olympic connection as his father was a sufficiently accomplished breaststroke swimmer to have been well in contention to compete at the planned 1940 Tokyo Games.

Dawson is now looking forward to improving his golf at the local and world-renowned course he knows so well in St Andrews.

Inclusion in the Olympic family has already wrought important changes in golf, he believes.

"When we started this process of bidding for the Games the real driver of it was that so many smaller countries in terms of golf said to us, 'If golf was an Olympic sport it would get much more recognition in our country, much more support from Government, maybe financial help. Could you please, please, please try to get golf into the Olympics?'

"We have seen that a lot of those countries have achieved those aims of more Government support and greater recognition. And since golf became an Olympic sport the number of national federations in membership has gone up by around 34 per cent - I think it’s gone up from something like 110 to 150.

"And that’s an indicator that as an Olympic sport golf is getting a lot more attention around the world. So we are on that road - and it has also expanded golf’s competitive landscape too."

One of the questions golf’s attempt to regain Olympic status raised was one that has also been applied to other major sports seeking a place in the Games - should they be there if Olympic gold is not the best thing that can be won?

"That is of course an argument that has been made by several people and very much at the time we were making the bid," Dawson responds. "But I think people are coming to realise - and it will take a few years and a few Olympics - that the Olympic gold is only available every four years, and there are four major championships in golf every year. So there is something special about an Olympic gold medal.

"And I would hope to see it develop to one of the pinnacle events in the sport. It’s a lot closer to that now than it was nine years ago and I think that process will continue. It will grow in importance."