Category: How to break 80

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How to break 80

How to Break 80 – Avoid Cute Shots When Short-Sided

I’ve made this mistake enough to be able to competently write about it. In fact, I still make this mistake. First of all, some definitions – to short side yourself is to miss the green to the side that the pin is placed so that you have less green to work with between you and the pin. So if the pin is on the right side and you miss the green to the right, you’re going to have less green to work with between you and the flag then if you had missed the green to the left.

If you miss the green to the short side, my advice is to just chip the ball on the green and try to save par but be willing to take bogey and get out of there. GET THE BALL ON THE GREEN – that is the key. You’ll probably end up farther from the flag then you were on your chip shot but just get the ball on the green. You want to be putting and not chipping again.

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How to break 80

Finding the Zone

From 79 tips to break 80 – soon to be released golfing publication. I was going to save this but thought others would find it enjoyable and helpful.

Finding The Zone

I know that I’ve been in The Zone at least once on the golf course. It was the Spring of 1989, and it was my first time playing golf for the year. I was out playing with two good friends of mine that I hadn’t seen for several months. We were playing Tanglewood Golf Course (affectionately known as Tangleweed).

I was playing with my Delta Golden Crown golf clubs. I tell you that as further proof that I was in The Zone, as you will soon see. The golf ball would dwarf the face of these clubs when you addressed it. Oversized clubs hadn’t made their splash in the golf world yet, or maybe I was stubbornly holding onto those Golden Crowns. My equipment was far from ideal. In fact, when I later bought new oversized clubs, I was amazed at the difference in club head size and in the overall length difference between new and old.

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How to break 80

How to break 80 – mind games

When you head out to the course, do you tell yourself, “I want to break 80 today”? Or do you say, “I need to shoot 40 or better for the front nine”? If so, you may be setting yourself up for defeat before you get started.

If the number that you are focusing on is “80” – you may just shoot that. If you want to break 80, why not focus on 79 or 78 or even 77? Get the number “80” out of your head. If you have a halfway goal of 40 or better, change that to 38 or 37 or 36. Go out to the course with the thought of shooting 77. You can still miss that goal by as many as two strokes and break 80. But make sure you’ve convinced yourself that your goal is 77 otherwise you may fool yourself into an 81.

The same logic holds true for breaking 90 or 100. Don’t get so focused on the number that that’s all you can think about. If that’s all you think about, you’ll probably shoot the number or more.

Looking for more tips on how to break 80 – see my publication, 79 tips to break 80 in golf.

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How to break 80

How to Break 80

I headed out to the driving range today in search of new ideas for how to break 80 and whenever I go to the driving range I try to work on a specific skill. You don’t want to head out to the driving range and just start pounding balls with no purpose. There was a flag 56 yards away from me so I decided that I would find a swing that would hit the ball 56 yards on the fly. What better skill to work on at the driving range than to hit a ball an exact distance consistently!

I went back to my stiff wristed shot as described in one of my tips for breaking 100. If you need a refresher on what that is then check it out now. I came up with a swing with a 56 degree sand wedge that went back to 10 o’clock and ended at about 1 o’clock. If you’re not following – my feet are at 6 o’clock and my head is at 12 o’clock. If my backswing takes the club back to parallel with the ground then the club is at 9 o’clock. If my follow through takes the club to parallel with the ground then the club is now at 3 o’clock. This swing resulted in about a 56-58 yard shot.

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How to break 80

Breaking 80 with the tools you already have

A goal among many amateur golfers is to break 80 and shoot in the 70s. I am starting a weekly (perhaps daily) column on how to do just that with the golfing tools that you already have in your possession. I recommend some practice but I’m going to go about this by not focusing on changes to your golf swing. Ben Hogan already did that in his book Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons. Instead, I want to focus on the other components of golf that come into play that you might not be marshalling in your quest to break 80. If you are reading this then you must feel that you have a realistic chance of breaking 80. Whether that means you have currently shot an 80 or even a 96 as your best score, I’ll leave it up to you to determine whether you have a realistic chance of breaking 80.

With that, let’s get started on breaking 80.

Looking for more tips on how to break 80 – see my publication, 79 tips to break 80 in golf.