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Breaking... 100, 90, 80, Par - What are the keys?

Breaking 100 - Keep your ball in play, minimize the mishits (chunks, duffs, skulls, etc.)
Breaking 90 - Above, plus improve your short game. Minimize blowup holes - if you play bogey golf and get just ONE par, you're shooting 89.
Breaking 80 - Above, plus minimize three-putts and improve your course management skills. Take your medicine when you have to - you can still bogey 7 holes and shoot a 79.
Breaking par - Solid performance in every aspect of the game. If you miss a GIR, be able to get up and down. Minimize the damage in all your shots.
 
this will sound boring but getting to 80 has been about making my worst shots better / less damaging. for me to play in the 70's on a routine basis i realize my good shots have to be good enough to help me score. by example- if I'm laying 2 off the green 50ft from the pin, I can boggie the hole by just getting my chip on the green most of the time. To statistically save par I need to get within 10ft on a repeatable basis then let my putter save me about 50% of the time.

if I'm learning anythign on this journey it is that my iron play will never be so great that I hit a high number of GIR's and that I must improve my chipping and pitching.
 
I'm thinking to break 100 it's about getting off the box consistently and playing the shot/swing you brought to the course that day.

Breaking 90 is about working to eliminate multiple 6's and 7's... Just watched my wife kick my backside yesterday (we do match play)... where she shot her personal best 85 with only a triple here or there.. and a bunch of pars.

Breaking 80 I think is about FW's and GIR's. Getting on the green in reg is a premium to score well. Solid short game helps too - but a high GIR% is needed to have a possibility to go low.

Breaking Par: when everything is clicking... All in all you have to give yourself chances to score (GIR and short game) and then putt well. I think that's where I'm lacking right now is the consistency in putting - although my practice is about 3 putts on the practice green before a round starts.
 
From my experience breaking 100 consistently can be achieved by an improved short game. My problem was giving away too many strokes around the greens. If you don't have breakdown holes caused by a bad short game, all you need is half the round to be a bogey. 9 doubles and 9 bogeys is a 99.

Being in the trying to break 90 crowd, for me its consistency or lack of that prevents it. I can hit good drives. Hit a good iron and make a green in regulation. Have a good chip when I miss. Make a putt. But trying to put them all together is what is hardest. At least one, maybe more than one of those things fails me. Preventing me from making enough pars. That is the key to breaking 90 in my opinion. At least it happens to be where I'm at. Trying to be more consistent and be better at putting more of those things together.

Breaking 80 means you're pretty good at most facets. You probably miss a few too many putts. Miss too many par chances. Probably mishit a few times. I would think its just a matter of improving a little of everything.

I wouldn't know about breaking par. But I would think if that is your goal you are already a very talented golfer. You probably make birdies most rounds. It then becomes mental. Course management. Making more putts. Grinding out pars.

Of course, these are all opinions from a guy still trying to break 90. Trying to break 80 and par will likely never be on my radar.
 
Breaking 90 is about getting close to the green in regulation, and getting down in 3 or less from there. 18 over on a par 72 is 90. When you hit that green in regulation, getting down in 2 banks extra shots for the inevitable two-chip hole.
Breaking 80 for me is getting up and down more consistently. I hit 6 greens yesterday and shot 84. Only got up and down 4 times of the remaining 12. Turning the 5s into 4s and the 6s into 5s is what will take me to the next level.
 
For me my path is this.

Break 100 - Keep the driver in play. No penalties from the tee.
Break 90 - Have a variety of short game shots. Keep putts below 35.
Break 80 - Stay engaged the entire round. Hit greens. No doubles. Putts around 30.
Break Par - Turn on the video game console. :ROFLMAO:
 
Lefty Moonshot said:
This is a cool question. Im excited to hear what others have to say! Here are my thoughts. I've only broken 80 twice.

Beak 100: Eliminate all "duff" hits
Break 90: Eliminate all duffs, no 3-putts
Break 80: Eliminate all duffs, no 3-putts, cannot lose balls off the tee
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This feels like a very succinct yet accurate description.
 
Great response all around. So I’ll try a slight different directions. I’ll divide the game into four categories; driving, approach, chipping (short game), putting. Each category can individually help you improve to the next level. Assign each category a number of strokes that category cost you in strokes per round. For discussion, I’ll assign each category with 9 strokes a round. Hence my average score is 108.

Start with your worst statistical category. Say it’s putting and you average 45 putts a round. If I tighten up that category to an average of 36 putts per round, I break a 100. Even if the rest of my game still sucks.

Take your next worst category and attempt to not master, but become proficient in and you could be looking at 90 in your face. And so forth down the line till you’ve become proficient at most all aspects of the game, thus you’d be looking at par.

Oversimplified. Yes. But it holds true I believe. You don’t need that shiny (or matte) new $500 driver to break 100 or even 90. Take that club you can progress the ball down the fairway off the tee. Might be a 5 iron, 5 hybrid, or 5 wood. Keep the ball in play consistently, while you shore up other aspects of your game.

Is it a variation of strokes gained. Yes. But some folks may not understand strokes gained. Anyways. Just my thoughts.


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I can only speak for two of them.

100 is limit 3 putts. I feel like if you stay under 40 putts you have a good shot to break 100.

90 is don't have any penalties. If you don't lose a ball you have a great shot.
 
Lots of valid points. And lots of ways to achieve these goals. For me, it's all about the short game and putting. I came back last year after a 20+ year hiatus, and the very first game shot 103. a few weeks ago, I shot an 88, but still average mid 90s.

I had lost some distance due to being older with less range of movement. So my drive distance is about 200 on a really good drive, but 180 to 190 on average. The good thing is that it's in the fairway most of the time. So, that's a plus. Honestly would rather be 190 in the fairway, than 240 out in the woods!

But still, accepting that loss of distance, went straight to work on shots inside of 50 yards. When playing alone, I'd play two or three balls and keep track of the outcome of each. What I noticed was that I could have a mis-hit off the tee, and still score as well as the better drive, as long as my second shot was good. For example a 350 yard hole....mis-hit tee shot goes 150. Second shot goes 150 using my hybrid, and an easy 50 yard pitch. Bogey. Same hole, 200 yard tee shot, 150 yard second shot....still with the hybrid, but left or right of the green, 30 yard pitch. Bogey.

When my score suffered the most was due to not chipping/putting well. And sometimes, there's the blow up hole....or two!

But it also shows I need to work now on directional control with my approach shots to get further improvement. That will be a never-ending quest, I reckon.

So to me, short game is king!
 
I've worked through (at times up and down) that progression, at least to breaking 80. I don't know if there is a recipe by score milestone. All of my scoring improvements have come from 1) progressive efforts to build a more consistent swing with reasonably predictable outcomes, 2) developing a wedge game, and 3) short game times a billion. All of my efforts have worked toward the same end. Get the ball from tee to green/proximity without chaos and then rely on wedges and the rest of the short game to get the ball in the hole. If there is anything I have learned, good/manageable misses and smart recovery shots are more important to my game than those satisfying flushed shots. It doesn't have to look pretty.
 
MattyD-MPLS said:
Great thread, @jmix18! The key breaking anything is getting out of trouble without causing any extra shots. If you are in the trees, get out where you have a clear shot at the green.
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Be willing to Take. Your. Medicine. when you put yourself in a poor spot.
 
jmix18 said:
Be willing to Take. Your. Medicine. when you put yourself in a poor spot.
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Boy that's the truth... I got out of position yesterday a couple times and turned it into triples real quick. And that was with a decent approach on one and sinking a 10 footer on the other.
 
I can speak to breaking 80. I have a career best of 77 on a par 70 course. For me, to have a shot to break 80, these are key:
No doubles
No 3 putts
Keep tee ball in play
Have a good short game
Convert some one putt pars.
 
Honestly there’s no single formula to shooting a specific score. Different players have different strengths and weaknesses and so they’re going to get to the same score in different ways.

For example, last year I shot a 79 last year with five 3-putts. I shot an 89 with eight penalty strokes. If I simply ceased 3-putting and ceased taking penalty strokes I would break 80 almost every time. Penalties and putting have always been an issue for me but I make up for it by hitting the ball far and being good around the greens.

I will say that double bogey avoidance is key to breaking both 90 and 80, but the route you take to eliminate those can vary drastically.
 
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I agree about the short game, and the thing about having a good short game is you don't need to be young or athletic to develop one.
 
The first time I ever broke 100 it was because I hit the ball really straight that day. I'm not sure a single tee shot or approach shot was left or right by more than 20 yards. I duffed a lot of shots and I took "one more than regulation" to reach almost every green but never chipping out of trouble, never in bunkers, never had to hit any kind of recovery shot or special short game shot. In retrospect, not much to breaking 100 other than happening to string together a lot of ho-hum bogey holes.

As I progressed to breaking 90 a couple years later then to eventually breaking 80 many years after that I pretty much saw a trend. My best rounds come when I hit fewer totally wasted or disaster shots. It's that simple.

Without hitting a single spectacularly good shot, just a steady stream of my routine good-to-mediocre shots could potentially score in the mid-70's. The difference in the best round I've ever had (75) and my average scores (88) is simply the accumulation of tee shots into the woods, topped shots into pond, duffed chips, missed short putts, bladed wedges, balls left in bunkers and all the other horrible shots that cost a full stroke or more.

So if I hit about a dozen disaster shots a round, I'll shoot around 90. If I only hit half a dozen, that's low 80's. I've got to minimize that down to no more than two or three horrible shots if I'm to break 80. And I'm still perfectly capable of shooting 97 on a day when the disaster shots pile up one after another after another.

I suspect most people are the same. An 80's shooter can't just go out and somehow contrive to hit 12 fairways instead of 6 and shoot in the 70's. Or a 90's shooter can't just eliminate 3-putts and tee off with a 5-iron and knock those scores down into the 80's. There's too many sources of totally wasted shots to be "strategized" or "course managed" around. Bad golfers shooting over 100 or even in the 90's waste strokes in all sorts of different ways.
 
charley48 said:
Trying to break 80 and par will likely never be on my radar.
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Don't give up! I found that once I crossed the 90 barrier mid 80's came relatively easy. It was like I passed a mental wall where I had new found confidence in my ability to play multiple holes of solid golf. And once you shot a few at 83, maybe an 82, breaking 80 seems realistic.
 
100 - improve ball striking to eliminate the duffs
90 - improve short game
80 - course management / penalty avoidance, really tighten up the short game - never take more than 3 shots from inside 100 yards.

I’ve broken 80 twice. Both times it was what I would call boring golf. i kept every shot in front of me. Chipping and lag putting was well above average.
 
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MonroeBob1955 said:
Great response all around. So I’ll try a slight different directions. I’ll divide the game into four categories; driving, approach, chipping (short game), putting. Each category can individually help you improve to the next level. Assign each category a number of strokes that category cost you in strokes per round. For discussion, I’ll assign each category with 9 strokes a round. Hence my average score is 108.

Start with your worst statistical category. Say it’s putting and you average 45 putts a round. If I tighten up that category to an average of 36 putts per round, I break a 100. Even if the rest of my game still sucks.

Take your next worst category and attempt to not master, but become proficient in and you could be looking at 90 in your face. And so forth down the line till you’ve become proficient at most all aspects of the game, thus you’d be looking at par.

Oversimplified. Yes. But it holds true I believe. You don’t need that shiny (or matte) new $500 driver to break 100 or even 90. Take that club you can progress the ball down the fairway off the tee. Might be a 5 iron, 5 hybrid, or 5 wood. Keep the ball in play consistently, while you shore up other aspects of your game.

Is it a variation of strokes gained. Yes. But some folks may not understand strokes gained. Anyways. Just my thoughts.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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I like this approach. It does require the hard look at your game, and a tough-but-honest evaluation of it.
 
I had a run early on this year where I was struggling to get back into the 70s, now I haven't shot over 80 in the last 4 rounds.

I can tell you for me, breaking 80 always entails:
- Minimal to no penalties (OB or Hazard)
- Try to make no more than bogey (especially avoid penalty-less doubles)
- 1-2 birdies
- Keep the ball in play

I haven't broken par in 15-20 years, but it's a lot more mental. Very boring golf that I'd love to find again 😢
 
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The first half-dozen or so times I broke 80 there were no penalties, no 3-putts and no doubles. So that seemed like a pretty good formula.

Then the most recent 79 had a penalty, a triple and two 3-putts. How is that even possible? I made four birdies.

Go figure, golf's a lot easier when you make four birdies in a round. Who knew?
 
Et Tu Brute? said:
The first half-dozen or so times I broke 80 there were no penalties, no 3-putts and no doubles. So that seemed like a pretty good formula.

Then the most recent 79 had a penalty, a triple and two 3-putts. How is that even possible? I made four birdies.

Go figure, golf's a lot easier when you make four birdies in a round. Who knew?
Click to expand...

Nothing like a handful of birdies on the card to help post a good number!
 
Scooby45 said:
Nothing like a handful of birdies on the card to help post a good number!
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I will say this, I was so excited about the four birdies I forgot to whine and moan about the triple and the 3-putts. I must be getting too mellow in my old age.
 
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