7 Ways Good Golfers Break 80 (That Every Golfer Can Do)

Now for many golfers, breaking AT for the first time is seen as the holy grail, but if this

milestone continues to elude you or you're struggling to know how to get there, in this

video I'm going to give you some proven tips that are really going to help you break AT

whether it's for the first time or on a more consistent basis. The data in this video comes

courtesy of ShotScope, one of the leaders when it comes to distance measuring devices and performance

tracking. And if you're interested in starting your own journey with ShotScope to get some data

on your own game, I've put some handy links in the description below where you can get your hands on

their products for the best price in your area. Without further ado, let's dive into the seven

proven ways you can break 80 for the first time. Now more driver distance has a direct correlation on your ability to shoot lower scores. If you look

at the data from Shotscape you can see that golfers shooting in the 80s are only averaging 236 yards

off the tee with their driver whereas golfers shoot in the 70s are averaging 261 yards so that's

a really big jump so clearly there's a link between more distance and lower scores but if you are able

to increase your driver distance it doesn't necessarily always work out to lower scores

if for example you're spraying all over the place with your added length and you're finding out

of bounds lost balls penalty areas that extra distance is not necessarily useful to you but

generally speaking a little bit more distance will definitely help i'm going to try right now

Now I'm going to try and hit this a little bit harder and get that driving distance up

And hopefully it will help me shoot something in the 70s a bit more often

Pretty happy with that one. So there you go. If you can try and hit it further, keep it in play

it should help your ability to shoot slower scores. Now, another big dividing factor between golfers

that shoot in the 70s versus those that shoot in the 80s is their ability to find greens in regulation

If you look at the data from ShotScope, it tells us the golfers shooting in the 80s

only hit just over five greens in regulation per round, whereas golfers who are shooting in the 70s

hit nine greens around. So that's a significant increase. Now what can you do to increase your chances

of finding more greens in regulation? Well, the first thing you can do is find the fairway off the tee

The data from ShotScope tells us you're around about 9% more likely to hit the green

if you're on the fairway versus if your ball is in the rough. So that's your first point

and luckily I've hit a good tee shot here, so I've got off to a good start. Now if you look at the trouble on most holes

you'll see that around the green, it tends to be short of the green. So you wanna be choosing a club

that's gonna be favouring going slightly long of the flag. That's gonna increase your chances of hitting the green

If you also think about when you're misstriking a shot, what tends to happen? You lose distance

If you lose distance, you're more likely to be finding that trouble short of the green. So choose an appropriate club

In here, for this particular shot, The flag is 150 yards away, give or take

and my A time carries 155 yards. So that's the perfect club for this particular shot

I know I'm probably not gonna come up short the green, it's gonna increase my chances of hitting the green

And the other thing you need to consider is where you're aiming. In this particular shot, you can see here

the flag is positioned quite tight on the left-hand side. So that's a flag you don't wanna go chasing

If you miss it short left, short-sided, it's gonna reduce your chances of getting up and down

from there and potentially making a bogey. So on this particular shot, I know I've got the right club

I'm going to be aiming probably 10 foot right at that flag, the middle of the green is going to increase my margin of error and hopefully give me a better chance of hitting the green

and shooting something in the 70s. So I've talked the talk here, let's give it a go

I know I got the right club going to be aiming just right at that pin Hopefully we can find the green

Whoa now see that's a perfect example didn't hit it great but it just covered the bunker because I

had the appropriate club and it's kicked forward on the green about 15 foot right at the pins I'm

absolutely delighted with that. If you follow those tips, it should help you find a few more greens

Now, this might look like a relatively easy shot. I'm going to get my rangefinder out here

and it's going to tell me that we are exactly 70 yards away from the pin. But if you look at the

Shotscope data, it tells us that golfers shooting in the 80s are much worse at minimizing wasted

shots from this particular distance, i.e. they're not hitting the green on their first attempt and

and they're often pitching or chipping again, which is no good if you want to shoot lower scores

It's round about one more time per round that golfers in the 80s are doing this

So you absolutely need to make sure you practice shots from this particular distance

There's a few things you can do to increase your chances of not having to pitch or chip again

First thing is obviously making sure you're achieving clean contact from this distance with your wedges

So practicing strike, making sure you're getting ball then turf is obviously a good place to start

But I think the real key here is having some sort of system in place that's going to allow you to control your distances

So it could be a simple clock face drill, for example. So we know that swinging the club back

at different lengths is going to control the speed that you put into the wedge and that's

going to control the distance output at the other end. So for example, for me, I know that my lob

wedge out four goes 85 yards, but my nine o'clock swing with a lob wedge, so left arm parallel to

the ground, goes around about 70 yards. So that should be the perfect swing and club for this

particular shot. Obviously, the last thing you want to do is just make sure you're airing on the side

of safety in terms of where you're aiming. Don't go chasing those really tight pins. If it's just

over a bunker and you're getting a bit too cute with it, you could get into serious trouble there

So make sure you're favoring longer the pin in that particular situation or just aiming at the

slightly fatter part of the green. That's going to increase your chances of not having to pitch

or chip again. So I know this is a perfect nine o'clock swing for my lob wedge. I'm going to aim

just right at the pin and hopefully we can knock it close. Just right at the pin. It's not a great shot but it's on the green and I'm not chipping or pitching

again. Now arguably one of the easiest ways you can go from shooting in the 80s to shooting in

the 70s is to reduce the number of what I would call troublesome tee shots you have during a round

and what I mean by troublesome tee shots is any tee shot that ends in a fairway bunker, a lost ball

out of bounds or in a penalty area. And if you look at the data from ShotScape you'll see that

golfers shooting in the 70s are only having around about two of these tee shots per round

whereas golfers in the shooting in the 80s have it almost double that. So clearly there's progress

to be made off the tee if you want to break 80. And there's a few things that I think you can do

to reduce the number of troublesome tee shots you have during a round. The first would be to use

what technology you have available to scope out what lies ahead so on this particular hole here

at the beautiful stoke park you can see here there's obviously a massive penalty area on the

left we'll come on to that in a second but there's also trees on the right that sort of stick out so

it's like can i use my rangefinder to see exactly how far those trees are away so i know that they're

sort of 215 yards away so i can definitely carry those so that's useful information to me to know

that i can actually go a bit further right here and probably carry those trees but the biggest So the biggest bit of advice I would say is to get some technology that allows you to see where the widest part of the fairway is shotscape has the g6 watch which has hole maps

which is really useful to see exactly what lies ahead and choosing a club that's going to hit the

ball to the widest part of the fairway it's going to increase your margin for error on your tee

shots and hopefully reduce the number of those troublesome tee shots right is obviously a slightly

miss here but i'm going to try and hit it straight it's a drivable par four so i'm just going to aim

pretty much just right at the green and hopefully we won't go left in the penalty area

and we might even find the fairway. Yeah, pretty happy with that one just down the right hand side. So try those tips in terms of

finding fairways more often, less troublesome tee shots and your scores should come down

Now this might sound obvious but golfers who want to shoot in the 70s more often need to reduce the

number of three putts they have per round. If you look at the data from ShotScope it tells us that

golfers shooting in the 80s are basically having one more three putt per round versus golfers who

are shooting in the 70s and if you look a little bit deeper into the data of a five handicap golfer

versus a 10 handicap golfer you'll see that putts per green in regulation golfers who are 10

handicappers are actually having more three putts than they are one putts whereas the opposite is

true for five handicap golfers so it's obviously a two-pronged attack in terms of reducing three

putts you need to be better at short range and there's a couple of things that as a three handicap golfer myself that have really helped me reduce the number of three putts I have during

the round the first is if you're short on time before a round just spend a couple of minutes

having some long putts on the practice putting green just to get a feel for how the ball's

rolling on that particular day it'll help you sort of calibrate your brain and just get a feel

and understanding of how fast the greens are on that particular day the other thing i like to do

on really long putts is to break the putt down into thirds but also really focusing on that final

third because that's when the ball is slowing down it's going to be affected the most by the slopes

of the green so really focus on the final third of the putt read it as if you had a putt from that

shorter distance versus from back here and that'll just give you a better sense of what the ball is

going to do as it slows down and should hopefully reduce the proximity of the hole from long range

and that would obviously then correlate to reducing the number of three putts so give those tips a try

focus on reducing three putts and that could well get you from shooting in the 80s to the 70s

the golfers who are consistently shooting in the 70s are getting up and down when they miss

the green more than golfers who are shooting in the 80s. If you look at the shot scope data, you can

see that five handicapped golfers who are breaking 80 most of the time get up and down when they

miss the green 47% of the time, which is pretty much one in two attempts, whereas 10 handicapped

golfers who are breaking 80 not much of the time, it's 39%, which is closer to one in three attempts

Clearly, scrambling is a very important metric if you want to shoot lower scores. There's a few

things you can do to increase your chances of getting up and down and breaking 80. The first

thing would be to choose the right club for the shot at hand. So you see here, I've not got loads

of green to work with in this particular shot, so my 54 degree wedge is going to work wonders

But if the pin was at the back of the green, there's a lot more green to work with, I'd probably

switch to a lower lofted club, maybe a 9 or an 8 to get the ball running a little bit more like a

putt and getting it running out towards the hole. One thing I really like to do on shots like this

like short chip shots is to read the green So I stand at the edge of the green and have a proper scope out of the slope and obviously choose the line accordingly And the last thing that really

helped me in reduce my proximity when chipping is just have the mental approach of trying to

hold it. Obviously when you aim small, you miss small and having that real sharp focus on trying

to hold it, I've found has really reduced my proximity. Obviously I'm not going to hold it

a lot of the time, but it should help you hit the chip shots a little bit closer than you did

before. So I know this is like a right edge putt, I've just had a read of it and I'm really

focused on my landing spot and trying to hole it. There we go, not a bad result. Focus on holing it, choose the right club and that should increase

your chances of getting up and down. Now another way you can make inroads on your scores and hopefully move from shooting in

the 80s to in the 70s is by missing fewer putts from this particular range inside five feet. It's

a critical distance, keeps momentum of your round going. If you look at the data from ShotScope

you'll see that golfers shooting in the 80s are missing around about one more putt per round from

inside five feet versus golfers shooting in the 70s. So clearly there's progress to be made from

this distance. It's important to remember you don't have to be perfect from this distance. Even

PGA Tour players from three to five feet are only holing out on average 87% of the time. So what's

that? One in seven. But if you can hole out once more per round from this distance, it's going to

make a real impact. So what are the things that you can do to increase the likelihood of holing

out from short range? Well, there's a few things I like to do. The first thing is once you've read

the putt and picked your line, you could choose a spot that's in between the ball and the hole to

roll the ball over. That's a good thing here. So there's a little blemish on the green there. that might work. Another thing I like to do is pick an imperfection at the back of the hole

That also helps me to be a bit more committed through the stroke. But in this particular putt

which is probably right half, there's a little bit of mud on the cup there, which is a really

good aiming point. Another thing you could do is switch to a golf ball that has some alignment

and assistance on it. So this is the TaylorMade TP5X Stripe. If you struggle to start your ball

online, this is a really good option to try. You can just line the ball up on your intended line

and then obviously when you're addressing the ball, just make sure the sight line on your putter is a line to the line on the ball and stroke away and hopefully you'll hole a few more putts that

way but this particular putt there's a speck on the hole which i really like it's just right half

perfect for this particular putt gonna just really be committed on that particular line

get the sight on the putter aiming at that and put a committed stroke on it

and in we go so if you could just hole at least one more putt from inside five feet

it might well take you from shooting in the 80s into the 70s so hopefully this video has given you

some food for thought in terms of the things you need to do to break 80, whether it's for the first

time or just on a more consistent basis. If I had to give you three key takeaways, they would be to

hit at least nine greens in regulation, have no more than two three-puts per round, and no more

than two failed chip or pitch shots from inside 70 yards. Those are the three things to really focus

on, but if you focus on those and the rest of the tips in this video, hopefully you'll be breaking 80

in no time. Big thank you to Shotscope for providing the data in this video and as I

mentioned earlier if you're interested in trying any of the Shotscope products I've put some handy

links in the description so you can get hands on those. But that's all from me here from Stoke Park

we'll see you next time