After one round of golf in the last five years, Dave Tindall is trying to break 90 for the first time in over a decade. Follow his journey here.
In previous editions of this diary, I’ve tried to rebuild my hugely neglected game in several ways – hitting the range, being given a putting lesson and having a session using a CGQuad that led to a possible revolution in my driving technique.
The UK weather and other commitments (but mainly the weather) meant I only managed three 18s when this project began back in August 2024.
And the sharp cookies among you will look at the numbers below and say in unison: “Ha! 90? He hasn’t even broken 100 yet? Dream on Tindall!”
August 2024: Bentham Golf Club – Score 102
November 2024: Disley Golf Club – Score 101
November 2024: Baildon Golf Club – Score 109
The 109 at Baildon in West Yorkshire did beat me up a bit and then the poor weather (have I mentioned that yet?) put the kybosh on any other attempts.
The UK has witnessed its usual chilly temperatures this winter so, realistically, I was thinking March when the golf clubs would come out of hibernation again.
But thanks to some cajoling from Golf365 colleague Mark Townsend, I hit the course again with the calendar still showing January.
The cajoling was made easier by Mark’s choice of venue: the very magnificent Moortown Golf Club in Leeds.
Many golf fans will have heard of Moortown. It’s a top 100 course, was designed by world-famous architect Alister MacKenzie (Augusta National and Royal Melbourne among many others) and has the unique distinction of being the first course in the UK to stage the Ryder Cup.
Great Britain beat Walter Hagen’s Americans 7-5 in that 1929 match for those asking.
Take a look at images of the course a couple of weeks ago and it was covered in thick snow.
We have around 7 inches of snow covering the course, cold temps this week, this may take a while
@MoortownGC pic.twitter.com/AMc1VNg4S1
— Moortown Course Info (@MoortownGreens) January 6, 2025
No wonder I haven’t been thinking about playing golf.
Until now…
There are piles of the white stuff still shunted to one side in the car park but when I walk onto the first tee alongside Mark and fellow Golf365 writer Matt Cooper the transformation is clear to see.
Most remarkable of all as we trot round in a fraction over three hours is the excellent condition of the greens. They’re in fantastic shape for January, especially after the deluge of snow.
We all get decent drives away off the 1st and, to be honest, I’m pretty relieved.
Confession time: since I holed out, windswept and bruised, for the 109 at Baildon I haven’t picked up a golf club. That was, erm, over 11 weeks ago.
One of the reasons I hadn’t broken three figures yet let alone my target score of 90 was a pathetic inability to hit greens. My Greens in Regulation tally over those three rounds? A combined tally of four. Woeful.
So, given my extended break, it’s rather remarkable today that I hit my first three greens in the right number.
With the weather freezing (okay, quite cold and me not being very hardy), I refuse to take my woolly gloves off on the greens so that’s perhaps why I three-putt all of them. Lack of feel and all that. Or is it just because they’re amazingly slick for this time of year?
Still, it’s a promising start and the good stuff continues with a trio of pars at 6 (Stroke Index 1), 7 and 8.
At the 143-yard par-3 8th I pull my tee-shot into the trees, get a lucky bounce towards the green and then flub a chip about 15 feet. We’re looking at a five or worse now.
But it appears to be my day. With a three-ball watching on from the tee opposite and expecting to stifle giggles at further incompetence, I chip in for par.
Crikey, I’m 5-over after 8. In the context of my ‘break 90’ challenge, I feel like a middle distance runner way inside world record pace.
But I’ve got away with a couple of iffy connections en route and posing for a photo as I pick my ball out of the cup – it was chip in, not a hole in one for goodness sake – is too much for the golfing gods.
While I’m thinking this could be a round to remember, those pesky golfing deities decide it would be funny to watch me hack down the ninth, hit one into a ditch and generally be hopeless. That unfolds and it adds up to a quintuple-bogey 9.
A par would have seen me play that first nine in 41. Instead it’s 46 and now I have to shoot 43 on the back nine to break 90. Hmmm.
I bogey 10 and 11 to sort of keep the dream alive but then am all over the shop again for a couple of holes, visiting moorland scrub and taking 15 swishes combined across the the 12th and 13th.
Suddenly, I’m looking at three figures again if this nonsense continues but as the Mars bar from the halfway hut kicks in a bit, I bogey 14, 15, 16 and 17 and am a tad unlucky not to add another at the superb closing hole, missing a four-footer and finishing with a double.
It’s an inward 49 but added to the opening 46 that’s 95. And that’s my best round by six shots since 2019.
One huge advantage today was having Mark in tow. He’s a member at Moortown, is a five-handicapper and knows the idiosyncrasies of my game having known me since our student days in Headingley.
That means little swing tips, modifications, where to aim and good-old fashioned encouragement.
The bunkers at Moortown are cleverly placed and I find sand a couple of times.
There are other candidates but I’m a contender for worst bunker player in the UK. I have no idea what to do – unless someone is there to tell me.
Mark, patiently, aligns me, tells me where to aim and also just how far and where to follow through. The latter is especially important. If I have an end destination for the club the rest kind of follows.
And thanks to Mark’s tutoring I get up and down once in real life play and, during a spot of practice, even hole out with my fourth attempt, the ball landing softly and dropping into the cup. Even the sound of the connection on that one sounds sweet.
I reckon Mark was worth about five or six shots today so there’s a lesson to my fellow hackers: play with someone who knows what they’re doing. Good players spot stuff in your technique that you yourself don’t see.
A 95 on an iconic course in great company makes this an excellent day.
Going from 101 to 95 is a decent step.
There’s a long way to go and I’m aware that I have history of playing quite well after a break before the bad habits kick in royally.
I’m not kidding myself as this was a good day. Shaving the next six shots off is quite a leap and could take many rounds and many months.
But suddenly, after an iffy start to this mission, breaking 90 again seems not in the realms of impossible dream.
READ MORE: If you had one last round to play – Royal Dornoch
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