Paul Dunne: ‘You notice the cut line and it starts to get into your head’

In the second round of the Spanish Open last week, half a dozen holes from home, in the tick-tock rhythm of a good score, Paul Dunne’s ball crash-landed in a tree. Like a petrified cat, it refused to budge. The host branch was just a couple of feet above the ground, and the ball was in plain sight, but golf is full of unaccountable accidents. Dunne took a penalty drop, finished the hole with a double bogey, and all of a sudden he was in a familiar place, dragged by the collar as he tried to get away.

“I was feeling fine about my game and I was flying – four under after 11. I wasn’t even thinking about the cut. Then you notice you’re on the cut line with six holes to go, and it starts to get into your head. You get used to it, but it’s never easy. If you want to play high level sport you have to deal with playing with pressure. If you don’t, it will swallow you up pretty quickly.”

For the last three-and-a-half years of his professional life, Dunne has lived mostly in this febrile neighbourhood, dicing with the cut line. Since he finished fourth in Denmark at the end of May 2019, collecting a cheque for nearly €110,000, he has played in 52 events and missed the cut in 41 of them. There is no catch-all explanation, because circumstances change, and form has many moods, other than good and bad. But in golf, like in stocks, the numbers keep running.

In Spain, Dunne holed a six-foot putt on the last hole on Friday to make the weekend, right on the cut line. He ended the tournament with three sub-par rounds for the first time in 38 months. In the world rankings, he climbed 90 spots to 1,311. In the small picture of here and now, it made no instant difference. Without a top 10 finish last week, he wasn’t going to have a starting spot at Valderrama this week; without a crazy run of hot form, he had no way of avoiding Q school next month. All of his playing privileges on the DP World Tour have expired.

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It is easy to pick up the threads of where Dunne used to be. Jon Rahm cantered to his third Spanish Open last weekend, but when he won his first title, four years ago, Dunne was the player he hunted on Sunday; he had led the tournament for three rounds, and even though Dunne didn’t win, everything about his game and his temperament stood up to scrutiny. In other arenas, that stress test had already been passed. When Dunne won the British Masters, six months earlier, he shot a sensational 61 on Sunday to defuse a final-day charge from Rory McIlroy.

[ From 2018: Spanish Open showing helps open up Major options for Paul Dunne ]

On the same early October weekend this year, five years later, he missed the cut at a Challenge Tour event in France. When the British Open returned to St Andrew’s this summer, for the first time since Dunne held the 54-hole lead as an amateur, he watched from a Challenge Tour event in Austria. That time in his life was a different place; not that long ago, but not near.

“I’ve never done an interview that’s been more than two minutes long without being asked about it [leading the British Open in 2015],” he says. “You know, it’s one of those things that I’ve talked about so much in interviews that it’s almost like I’ve forgotten the experience myself and I’m just regurgitating the same words.

“I don’t think I felt like a different player [back then]. I just felt like I was more in control of what I was doing. I had a better understanding of my own game and tendencies and how to get the most out of it. Over the last few years, through a few different things, I’ve been just trying to get my head around the best way to handle that again.”

Part of the issue was physical. In the second half of 2019, when Dunne’s form collapsed, his right hand was giving him trouble. During a practice round, before Q school, he knew he couldn’t continue. So, he withdrew from the tournament and went to see a specialist in England.

“I had to get one of the bones shaved down and something in behind it removed, just to free up my range of motion. I don’t think I ever got the full range of motion back, but pretty close. My hand was okay after about three months for day-to-day stuff. I started off hitting, like, 20 shots, but if I hit 40 shots I’d have to take three or four days off to let the swelling go down. Before I could play and practice fully, without having to worry about it at all, it was pretty close to a year.”

During his recovery in 2020 Dunne played just seven times on the DP World Tour, but because of the pandemic every player’s status was protected for two seasons. There were enough opportunities to play his way out of trouble.

“When you lose it [your form], and when you’re in that place when you don’t know how you’re going to find it, it’s extremely frustrating. You feel a bit lost. You don’t know what to do. When it’s really tough is when you come off the course, and you struggled, and you don’t know why. Then you don’t even know if it’s worth practising. Are you wasting energy? Are you going to get more frustrated? That’s the place nobody wants to be in.”

If I had to retire now, I would be disappointed in myself. That’s the thought that’s lingering in my head

—  Paul Dunne

When he was college in Alabama, Dunne started keeping a journal. He recorded thoughts and feelings from the golf course to build a database of reference points; if there was a day when he shot 76 instead of 70 because his mind had let him down, he wanted to log the thoughts that had betrayed him; when he played well, he wanted to capture that state of mind too.

“The mindset is much more important [than the technical fixes]. I feel like I’ve got a good handle on what makes me tick. For a little while, I did feel like I lost that. The journals are always here. They’re in a drawer under my bed. If I’m struggling it would be a reminder of: these are the things I do, this is the way I think, this is the way I feel when I play well.”

For three or four years, he was in regular contact with that feeling. He must think about that. “There’s a positive and a negative to it. I know I can do it. I know I can get to a level that I want to – because I’ve been there. That would always have been a question when I was an amateur – you don’t know if you’re good enough. I know now I can do it, because I’ve done it before.”

A few weeks after he led the British Open in 2015, Dunne sank the winning putt for Great Britain and Ireland in the Walker Cup, and as soon as he turned professional he was showered with invitations to play events on the main tour; his team mates were given openings on the Challenge Tour. Fame was the difference, and the sense of a young career on a skyward trajectory. For a long time, the Challenge Tour didn’t feature on his schedule. This year, he had no choice.

“I find the Challenge Tour events more difficult to play – it’s an issue I have to deal with. There’s no stands, there’s no people, there’s no atmosphere. It’s a very different dynamic. It’s not demoralising. The players are very, very good. It’s not that I feel like I’m better than people. There are so many players in the world who are around a very similar standard. A very select few are just miles better. It’s about getting the most out of your game, and owning it. The people who do that best do well.”

He returns to the Q school in the middle of next month, 10 days short of his 30th birthday. From his early seasons on tour Dunne has amassed more than €3 million in career earnings, and even though it is an expensive business, he has minded the money wisely. In the shark pool of Q school that gives him a head start.

“I’m set up in a good spot, financially. I’m lucky. It gives me the freedom to fight my way back without having to worry about the financial side of it so much. But if I had to retire now, I would be disappointed in myself. That’s the thought that’s lingering in my head. I want to get myself into a position where I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’m not there yet. That’s still what’s pushing me forward.”

Act Two is a blank page.