The secret to our success? Wait for the other team to mess up… meet the duo who met through work at Royal Mail and are now thriving at Daily Mail Foursomes competition

The beauty of the Daily Mail Foursomes competition stems from its ability to give golfers of all ages and golfing talents the chance to compete against each other on a level playing field.

And two competitors representing Nelson Golf Club — David Lavin and team-mate Nick Uttley — epitomise these merits, having entered this year for the first time with both golfers playing off scratch.

The duo first met through work at the Royal Mail and have since ‘played golf together for years and years’, said Lavin, 53, who is recently retired and is now working part-time at the pro shop at Nelson Golf Club, just outside Burnley.

Lavin competes with a 0.1 handicap while Uttley, 56, competes with a +1.3 handicap, and is ‘well known in the Lancashire area’ for his golfing prowess, according to Lavin.

And the two are enjoying a different challenge that comes with the foursomes format, one that is clearly paying off for them after they beat fellow Lancashire club Hesketh — whose players competed with a 11.6 and 7.7 handicaps — after finally getting the better of them at the 21st hole.

‘The secret to foursomes is to play with somebody who has the same handicap and playing style as you so you both hit it at exactly the same distance. Nick and I are both scratch golfers so we’re identical,’ said Lavin.

He and Uttley have designed a game plan that has successfully seen them through to the fourth round.

‘The tournament is tough for us because we don’t get many shots but the theory we work on is to hit the fairways and hit the greens and we wait for our opposing partners to cock up.

‘It always happens. It doesn’t always happen on every hole but they will mess up on one hole in a big way, and it’s just a case of always keeping ourselves in the game, right to the very end.’

That’s exactly what happened in their third-round match against Hesketh.

‘They were one up going up the last hole and they teed off and hit it into the trees,’ said Lavin. ‘We just hit it up the middle, put it on the green, rolled it in, and all square.

‘Then we went back down the first. If they par we have to birdie, so there’s not really much we can do, we just have to hold on.

‘And when we got to the third hole they didn’t get a shot on and that’s how we managed to win.’

Competitive sport is clearly in Burnley-born Lavin’s blood. While he grew up playing golf as a junior, his main calling was football which he played until a couple of leg breaks forced him to give it up.

‘I came back to playing golf in my thirties full-time and I’ve been doing it for the last 20 years,’ said Lavin.

‘If I’d have been 16 I’d have jumped at the chance to turn professional, but I’m a bit too old for that life now – or so the wife tells me anyway!’ he adds, laughing.

Nelson will play Bingley St Ives in the fourth round.