Mail Sport Extreme: Heard the one about the golfers playing for 279 days in a row trying to record a perfect 18 pars or better?

Turning up on a golf course at around 6am isn’t for everyone. To do it for 279 — and counting — days in a row takes a different kind of endurance.

That is what Tim Sudmann and his brothers Benji and Nic have been doing, with the former until recently leaving the course to head into his office job.

Starting the challenge of hitting 18 pars — or better — in a row over nine months ago as a 15-handicapped player, Tim has seen that come down to an 8.5 through his exploits on the course.

Now 279 days into the challenge, Tim’s record sits at 12.

Golf was never the goal. Having been born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and a German father, the three brothers spent their childhood in Asia, growing up in international schools.

Throughout their academic years, it was football that Tim was most interested in, picking up golf again in 2016 aged 17, having been introduced to it by his Scottish grandfather as a youngster.

Now 25 and based in Clapham, south London, all three brothers are focused on content creation, with Benji having experience in the field from time in America pre-Covid, while Tim and Nic dabbled in comedy sketches before relocating to the UK in 2023.

Tim and Nic were finding success difficult to come by in their efforts to go viral. That all changed on one February morning, earlier this year.

‘Tim had this random idea one day,’ says Benji. ‘Tim and Nic were doing random comedy sketches and then, when they moved to London in mid-2023, Tim was thinking of something that he could do daily, and he found someone on TikTok who was doing ice baths every day. Tim saw that and wondered what the golf version of that would be like.

‘So he came up with the challenge on the spot, posted a video that did really well, getting a few hundred thousand views, so he was like: “Well, I guess I’m trying again tomorrow!”. Then that just turned into what it is now.’

What it is now is a TikTok account with just under 100,000 followers, a YouTube platform with almost 34,000 subscribers and the brothers having over 189,000 followers on Instagram.

It is a challenge that has taken the brothers to places they could never have imagined. The trio were able to play the Old Course at St Andrew’s ahead of the AIG Women’s Open in August, as well as Bolingbrook Golf Course at the LIV Tour event in Chicago, among others.

It was in Chicago that the brothers received a reality check.

Speaking to the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Martin Kaymer, Cam Smith and Tyrell Hatton, the professionals balked upon hearing that Tim had — at that point — been playing golf for as many days as he had in his bid to complete his challenge, with Hatton predicting he may need another 1,000 days. Even DeChambeau, the most conservative, suggested it may take until day 634.

‘The pros at LIV did give us a bit of a reality check,’ admits Benji. ‘But I also think that if one of those guys, or any scratch golfer to be honest, were to play at Sandown, where we play most of the time, it would be easier than they thought.

‘Those guys are used to playing off the tips at Championship courses. But our hope is that as Tim gets better, he gets closer to scratch, as long as we keep playing on courses that aren’t insanely hard, there is a chance that it will happen one day.

‘We’re aware that it will take a while. It’ll be interesting to see how much it changes now that Tim doesn’t have a full-time job that he doesn’t have to sprint off to, and he can actually play full rounds and practise, head more towards scratch. Combine that with easier courses, that could be the strategy there.’

As any golfer will admit, knowing a course can have a huge impact on how to play your next shot.

However, those same golfers will concede that any day can quickly become a battle, hooking a drive into the deep stuff off the first tee.

The trio still have their sights set on the challenge and taking their social media accounts to the next level, with Tim now having left his office job to focus on golf full-time and monetising their videos.

In the meantime, though, the challenge continues.

‘On our first day back from the most recent trip to Portugal, it was really windy, pouring down with rain, so days like that you don’t think it’s gonna happen that day,’ admits Benji. ‘But on other days, I’ve seen Tim, and other golfers go on runs on and off camera.

‘Golf is one of those things where you can just be in the zone one day and make eight, nine or ten pars in a row then the next triple bogey the first.

‘There’s always the chance that one day we’ll land on one of those days again. Hopefully those days become more frequent when Tim actually gets a bit better at golf! We’ll just need to wait and see.

‘I think, purely for the challenge, it would be better to stick to the one course. But for the viewing experience, it’s much better to see new courses from time to time.

‘When we did some travelling through the summer, when we came to Glasgow (to play at Knightswood), a lot of the time people love it when they see a course they’ve played or live close to, it feels a lot more real for them and they care a lot more. So that’s important for us to keep things entertaining.’