There’s are a lot of “break 80” advice out there. I am evidence that they can work. Here are my top 5 strategies for breaking 80, with a little bonus at the end of the article.
No Hero Shots
This is a simple start and my number one tip. Absolutely no hero shots. What do we mean. If you feel that any shot has an element of avoidable risk, then make the safe, easy shot instead. The conservative choice. For example, you’ve just pushed what is a relatively good tee shot out to the right. The ball rolls off the fairway into the semi rough. You have a potential route to the green, but some hanging branches obscure your view. Your thinking, the tee shot was good. I’ve been hard done by here. It would be an opportunity missed if I didn’t try going for the green with a hard low fade. If this isn’t a strength of yours, then think again. Suck it up. Take your medicine. Play the safe shot. Make some yardage down the hole and leave yourself with a favourite iron/distance into the pin. You have the ability to play a good approach with the next shot from the safety of the fairway.
This mentality will help keep disasters off the scorecard. Furthermore, over time you’ll see a notable drop in double bogeys and above, and your average score will also drop.
Practice Short Game
Spend between half (1/2) and two thirds (2/3) of your practice time on short game. What’s our definition of short game? Everything from less than 100 yards and in, including:
- Pitch shots <100 yards. Practice to various lengths with various clubs. At least, 75 yards, 50 yards, 25 yards.
- Green side bunker shots. If this is a particular weakness. Get a lesson. Unless the lie is particularly bad, you should be getting out of bunkers first time with relative ease and skill.
- Chipping around the green. Get good with at least one club for chipping round the green. My personal preference is a 9i. Like many others, we recommend you avoid regular use of your 60o wedge.
- Putting. Specifically, do regular drills from 3ft, 6ft and 9ft. We highly recommend the simple drill of putting from 3ft at minimum. Put 8 balls 3ft around a hole and aim to putt all 8 balls successively into the cup. Keep doing it until you succeed in putting all 8 one after the other. If you miss one, start again. This will help relieve anxiety for short putts while on the course. We don’t want to be missing short putts when trying to achieve a sub 80 score.
Ignore Your Score
This piece of advice can inadvertently contradict other advice for breaking 80. For example. Some advise to focus on scoring over three holes at a time. Although course planning like this is good practice, we suggest a different approach to help mentality. From our experience, this following approach is especially effective in Match play competition. What we advise is that you do not follow your score while playing. All you should do is finish each hole, note your score down and move on to the next hole. Don’t keep tabs of your scoring. If you can, use a traditional card/paper scorecard, completing the old fashion way with a pencil. Avoid using apps that calculate your score as you go. Avoid updates from playing partners. I personally tell other players that I’m not interested in my score. We want to avoid keeping track of your score. Take a look when you’ve finished the round.
Together with “no hero shots”, ignoring your score gives you a powerful mindset and makes you focus on each hole. I guarantee this will stop you dwelling, keep you focused on the present, and enjoy golf more.
Know Your Weaknesses
This can be many things. We offer a few suggestions here. Our first suggestion is to understand your club weaknesses, especially if these happen to be Drivers or a 60o wedge. If you’re weak with either, then don’t use them. If you consistently hit a 3W over 200 yards, you can use this instead of a driver. If your 60o is weak, consider switching to a lower lofted wedge such as a 54o. Another weaknesses to avoid while playing would be forcing a draw or fade when they are not your strengths. This would fall under the “hero shot” avoidance.
Know and Play To Your Strengths
On the flip side. Know and play to your strengths. Understand what clubs you are most consistent with – direction and length. If an 8i is a strength, then take this into account and give yourself more opportunities play your 8i. If you have a natural draw, play to your draw. On holes that have a dog leg favouring a fade, play a little conservative on these holes “no here shots”.
Plan to Break 80
Your target score is 79 or better. Assuming a par 70 to 72 course, gives a buffer of +7 to +9 shots over par across 18 holes. Below is an example of what to aim for in the scenario of a par 72. In this scenario we have given some leniency with double Bogeys, balanced by the same amount of Birdies. Keep the Double Bogeys off the scorecard and you can easily see how your chances of breaking 80 improve.
For illustrative purposes, a real world example is shown below of my own first instance of Breaking 80 (on a relatively difficult course at least). In this example I achieved this with 3 Double Bogies. and just 1 Birdie. However, I had 10 pars and just 3 bogeys, giving a net score of 78, +8 over par. Note, this was achieved on a par 70 course, and at the time I had a handicap of 15.2, which dropped significantly as a consequence.
Bonus
There is one further piece of advice we would give. At HowIsMyGolf we like to share the best YouTube videos for related topics. In this case, we highly recommend watching the break 80 Ultimate Guide by Golf Sidekick. They have a few break 80 videos, but we believe this is by far the best. We appreciate it is long. But it is worth the watch and a save to your YouTube playlist.
Summary
If you have your own experience of breaking 80, 90 or 100, we’d love to hear your experience, advice or any tips you would offer someone else. Simply share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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