My lowest score in a round of golf is 80, which I posted for the fourth time last month. Sadly, painfully, I needed two putts from about 45 feet for a 79, but I lipped out the seven-footer for par.
Did I choke? It’s easy to say I did. Put it this way: If I were a golf writer “covering” my round, I’d likely spend a few paragraphs on how I appeared to crumble under the weight of the moment. But that’d be a rather contrived analysis of a more nuanced dynamic.
Stupid media, always grasping.
Anyway, since you’re asking–technically, you didn’t, but too late now–I figured you deserve a more textured explanation of how I’ve crept closer to breaking 80 and what’s holding me back. But this isn’t for me. Since I’ve spent several years researching and writing about the challenges that befall an average golfer trying to reach the next level, I figured one man’s disappointment shouldn’t be in vain. The lessons from the last few years, both the good and bad, were scattered throughout my near-breakthrough round.
1. There is no substitute for speed
One of the primary reasons I had a chance to break 80 was that I was driving the ball well, yet the main reason I haven’t done so is that I still don’t drive the ball well enough. The game would be a lot easier if I were 10 or 15 yards farther down the fairway. According to stats we analyzed with the help of Arccos, 80s-shooters like me who hit the ball relatively straight but not very far might appear to be in decent shape off the tee, but we lose more than three strokes into greens because of the length of our approach shots. Another way of looking at it, also via Arccos: every 10 yards farther off the tee correlates to one less stroke off your average score.
But wait, you said you three-putted the 18th green. That’s not a driving problem. Oh, but it was! My “decent” drive off the tee still left me with a 7-iron into the green, when my longer-hitting playing partners were hitting wedges. With a shorter club in my hand, I have a better chance of leaving myself a shorter putt.
Golf Digest has 75 years’ worth of advice for golfers on how to hit the ball farther, much of it worthwhile for me. I need a driver shaft that will produce less spin, a shallower downswing (my swing path analysis on our Mustard app rightly notes my hands are too out), and a more positive angle of attack through impact. But above all, I need more clubhead speed. The gains I made with the Stack system a year ago were encouraging enough that I am committed to digging back in. And it shouldn’t end there. As my colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen wrote last month, golf is embarking on a new era in which players are recognizing the benefits of power lifting. It’s not that complicated: the stronger you are, the faster you can swing, the easier the game gets.
2. Double down on no doubles
This seems too obvious to commit to print, but double bogeys are killers, both mathematically and psychologically. When I interviewed the Columbia University professor Mark Broadie, the founder of the strokes gained metric and author of the groundbreaking book, Every Shot Counts, he outlined four main contributors to double bogeys: penalty strokes, attempted recovery shots that backfire, wedges that don’t hit the green, and putts that don’t get to the hole. Here I can point to progress. My 80 did include one avoidable double bogey, but on other occasions, I made the type of sensible decisions that avoided unnecessary risks and helped keep a decent round alive. This ties to another essential point.
3. Your shortest clubs might matter even more
At the elite level, coaches emphasize the importance of distance control—Luke just did an excellent video on this— and understandably so: when every player can hit it 320, it usually comes down to who can navigate the next 80 yards best. For the rest of us, that 80-yard approach might be the difference between a putt for par or something worse. My one double bogey was indeed the result of a full swing with a gap wedge that sailed over the green, but as the round progressed, I channeled a session with the top teacher Darren May, who advises shortening the swing to different body parts—backswing to the ear is 80 yard, to the shoulder 70 yards, etc.—but keeping the same tempo. None of those wedge shots threatened the flagsticks, but they did their job, especially under pressure. That’s the other thing I’ve learned about breaking 80. It would be a hell of a lot easier if I just didn’t care.
4. Pressure is a privilege
When I made an eight-foot putt for par on 17, my first reaction was, Oh no. Much as I welcomed the opportunity of needing a par for 79, I also anticipated the swell of uncomfortable emotions it would bring. Nerves are an inevitable part of golf, and in conversations with coaches and sports psychologists, I’ve learned the solution isn’t to pretend they’re not there, but to just accept them and try to understand how they manifest in you. For instance, I know when I get nervous my downswing gets even steeper, which creates more sidespin and costs me distance. I recognize the need to take more club into greens. That part seemed to work, but on my subsequent three-putt, I also hit my first putt too hard, which is something I also do under pressure.
Add it all up, and there’s still work to do, but I at least know where to start. As disappointing as coming close to a goal can be, it continues to teach me plenty about golf in the process. I suppose I should feel lucky.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
