Duff finished 10-under-par with no bogeys, eight birdies and one eagle (on the 17th hole).<\/p>\n
Stuart Duff’s scorecard from his incredible round.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wanted to eventually break my age,\u201d Duff said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this came out of the blue really.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect to do it at 63, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duff assumed he might achieve the feat around the age of 66 or 67, if he kept fit.<\/p>\n
Hastings Golf Club in Bridge P\u0101 is considered one of the best golf courses in Hawke\u2019s Bay \u2013 his previous best was a 64 on the course.<\/p>\n
Duff was joined by three mates last week, who verified the achievement.<\/p>\n
He was also sure to hole out on each hole (meaning no gimmes).<\/p>\n
Duff, from Havelock North, tried not to think about shooting under his age too much during the round, after going six-under through the front nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was trying not to because a few weeks ago I was six-under through 10, and started thinking about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, as much as I could, I just wanted to play the shot in front of me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing really happened until the 14th and I birdied that … then on 16 I made a birdie, then I eagled 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hit a four-iron in there to about five feet [from the hole] and wiggled that in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he parred the last.<\/p>\n
He and a group of friends went out for an Italian meal at Alessandro\u2019s in Havelock North last week to celebrate.<\/p>\n
Duff has been a handy sportsman his entire life. He previously played 11 seasons as an allrounder for Central Districts and won two Plunket Shield cricket titles (New Zealand\u2019s domestic four-day cricket competition).<\/p>\n
He then started playing golf more seriously in his late 20s.<\/p>\n
In golf, he has represented the Hawke\u2019s Bay men\u2019s team plenty of times at interprovincial competitions, and is also a member of the New Zealand men\u2019s senior team (over-55s).<\/p>\n
In 2019, while representing the New Zealand seniors, he won an Asia-Pacific individual golf title.<\/p>\n
Duff previously worked as a teacher at Lindisfarne College for over 30 years and now works at the Hastings Golf Centre driving range at the showgrounds.<\/p>\n
His score last week does not count as a course record as he played off the blue tees, rather than the black tees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duff finished 10-under-par with no bogeys, eight birdies and one eagle (on the 17th hole). Stuart Duff’s scorecard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[53519,7127,1561,27126,38501,18126,46612,1976,293,111,139,69,8205,9882,213,102,1959],"class_list":{"0":"post-309933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-53519","9":"tag-age","10":"tag-bay","11":"tag-break","12":"tag-breaks","13":"tag-golf","14":"tag-golfer","15":"tag-hawkes","16":"tag-his","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-rare","21":"tag-spectacular","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-with","24":"tag-your"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}