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

Joel Tadman runs through the Shot Scope data that demonstrates how good golfers break 80 on a consistent basis.

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► Chapters:
Introduction 0:00-0:38
More driver distance 0:38
Hit more greens 1:44
Pitching from 70 yards 3:57
Fewer troublesome tee shots 5:59
Fewer three putts 7:59
Chipping it closer 9:38
Missing fewer putts inside 5 feet 11:32

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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 shot scope 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 Scot soap to get some data on your own game I’ve put some handy links in the description below we can get 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 shot scap you can see that golfish shooting in the 80s are only averaging 236 yards off the tea with their driver whereas Gish shoting the 70s they’re 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 driveway 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 outbounds loss balls penalty areas the 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 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 golfish 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 a round so that’s a 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 te 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 t-shot here so I’ve got off to a good start now if you look at the trouble of most holes you’ll see that around the green it tends to be short of the green so you want to be choosing a club that’s going to be favoring going slightly long of the flag that’s going to increase your chances of hitting the green if you also think about when you’re Mis striking a shot what tends to happen you lose distance if you lose distance you’re more likely to be find in that trouble short 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 going to come up short the green it’s going to 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 want to go chasy if you miss it short left short sided it’s going to 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 but I’m going to be aiming probably 10t right that flag the middle of the green it’s going to increase my margin for error and hopefully give me a better chance of hitting the green and shooting something in the 70s so I’ve taught the talk here let’s give it a go I know I’ve got the right Club going to be aiming just right at that pin hopefully we can find the [Music] green whoa now see that’s a perfect example didn’t hit it great but it just covered the bunker cuz I had the appropriate club and it’s kicked forward on the green about 15t right on the pins so I’m absolutely delighted with that if you follow those tips it should help you find a few more greens [Music] now this might look like a relatively Easy Shot I’m going to get my range finder 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 shot scope data it tells us that golfers shooting in the80s are much worse at minimizing wasted shots from this particular distance are you they’re not hitting the green on their first attempt 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 golf is 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 obviously making sure you you’re achieving clean contact from this distance with your wedges so practicing strike making sure you’re getting ball and turf um 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 um it could be a simple clock face drill for example so we know that swing in 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 yard but my 9:00 swing with a lob wedge so left arm parallel to the ground goes around about 70 yard 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 can get into serious trouble there so make sure you’re favoring longer 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 9:00 swing for my lob wedge going to aim just right at the pin hopefully we can knock it close just right of 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 7s is to reduce the number of what I would call Troublesome t-shots you have during a round and what I mean by Troublesome t-shots is any t-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 Shots skape you’ll see that golfer shooting in the 70s are only having around about two of these t-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 te if you want to break at and there’s a few things that I think you can do to reduce the number of troublesome t- 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 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 25 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 bit of advice I would say is to get some technology that allows you to see where the widest part of the Fairway is uh shotscope has the G6 watch which has whole 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 is going to increase your margin for error on your t- shots and hopefully reduce the number of those Troublesome t- shots right is obviously a slightly miss here but I’m going to try and hit it straight it’s a driveable par4 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 to Fairways more often less Troublesome t- shots and your scores should come down [Music] now this might sound obvious but golfers who want to shoot in the 70s more often need to reduce the number of three puts they have per round if you look at the data from shotscope it tells us that golfers shooting the 80s are basically having one more three-part 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 pups per Green in regulation golfers who are 10 handicappers actually having more three putts than they are one Parts whereas the opposite is true for five handicap golf so it’s obviously a two-pronged attack in terms of reducing three pots you need to be better at short range and there’s a couple of things that as a three handicap goal for myself that have really helped me reduce the number of three pots I have during the round the first is if you’re short on time before round just spend a couple of minutes having some long PS on the practice pting green just to get a feel for how the balls rolling on that particular day it will 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 puts is to break the putt down into thirds but also really focusing on that final third because that’s when the ball’s 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 part read it as if you had a put from that shorter distance versus from back here 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 um 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 [Music] 70s the golfers who are consistently shooting in the 70s are getting up and down when they missed the green more than golfers who are shooting in the 80s and if you look at the shotscope 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 two attempts whereas 10 handicap golfers who are breaking 80 not much of the time it’s 39% which is closer to 1 in three attempts so clearly scrambling is a very important metric if you want to shoot lower scores and 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 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° wedge is going to work wonders but if the pin was at the back of the green as there a lot more green to work with I’d probably switch to a lower lofted Club maybe a ner an eight to get the all running a little bit more like a PT and getting 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 I’ll stand at the edge of the green and have a proper scope out of the the slope and obviously choose the line accordingly and the last thing that’s really helped me in reduce my proximity when chipping is just to 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 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 part I’ve just had a read of it I’m really focused on my landing spot and trying to hold it there we go not a bad result focus on holding it choose the right club and 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 5T it’s a critical distance keeps momentum of your round going and if you look at the data from shot scope you’ll see that golfers shooting in the 80s are missing around about one more putt per round from inside 5 ft 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 PJ tour players from 3 to 5 ft are only H holding out on average 87% of the time so what’s that 1 in seven but if you can ha out once more per round from this distance is going to make a real impact so what are the things that you can do to increase the likelihood of hold holding 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 part 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 assistance on it so this is the tailor made tp5x stripe if you struggle to start your ball online um this is a really good option to try you can just um line the ball up on your intended line and then obviously when you’re addressing the ball just make sure those the sight line on your putter is aligned to the line on the ball and stroke away and hopefully you’ll hold a few more parts that way but this particular put there’s a a speck on the hole which I really like it’s just right half perfect for this particular putt going to 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 then we go so if you can just hold at least one more P from inside 5 ft it might well take you from shooting in the 80s into the70s so hopefully this video is giving 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 pups per round and no more than two failed chip or pit 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 at0 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’ll 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 [Music]