About Me

My name is John Richardson – I’m a 39 year old golfer who lives in Northern Ireland. In May 2004 I set myself a challenge. I was a hacker golfer who couldn’t break 100 and I decided I wanted to break par at my local course at Blackwood Golf Centre. And I was going to do it in a year or less. During the year the great and the good told me that it wasn’t possible. Sam Torrance told me to “dream on”, Darren Clarke told me that three years would be the minimum time I would expect to be able to do it in and countless experienced golfers scoffed at my chances.

But 363 days later, I completed a one under par round of 70 at Blackwood. It was a year of madness and mayhem. I hit more than 35,000 golf balls hit, read at least 60 books and watched dozens of instructional videos late into the night. I encountered some amazingly helpful characters along the way and even managed to stay married during the process!
The challenge was recorded in a monthly column in Golf Digest Ireland and nearly all the UK magazines carried articles on me with a full page spread in Today’s Golfer.

UK TV news piece on me when I completed the challenge:

BBC “Season Ticket” feature on my challenge playing the 16th hole at Belvoir Golf Course in Belfast

Since then I’ve written a book on the challenge “Dream On – The challenge to break par” which will be published worldwide later this year. If you want the first three chapters (and a couple of freebies) just send an email to tjohnrichardson@gmail.com and I’ll get them off to you.

Please visit www.scratchtoscratch.com for the secret I unearthed which gave me my first big breakthrough.

This blog is about my comments on the world of golf. It’s where I show what I learned and how it relates to the pros.

Many thanks for reading.