Every golfer has goals. Mostly of breaking one of three scoring barriers: breaking 100, breaking 90 or breaking 80. The lower you get the more difficult this achievement becomes. According to NGT Research, there are over 60 million golfers in the world today and less than half of them will never break 100.  33% will break 90.  However, only 5% will ever break 80.  That’s 3 million people out of 60 million golfers. So this makes breaking 80 an elite club for sure. If you have done it once in your life, congratulations. For those of you who follow the guru’s blog already know my formula for breaking 100 and breaking 90. Recently, one of my twitter friends posed the question,”What are your keys to breaking 80?” So after some thought and a bit of research, Here are my keys to success. Building from my list of breaking 90…………..

1. Drive the ball in play and average 230 yards. I am assuming that you are shooting in the low 80’s from the back tees at this point.

2. Most Important: You must average 8 greens in regulation. Assuming you make at least 2 of 8 birdie putts and don’t three putt. This leaves 10 greens that you have to chip, pitch and hit bunker shots.

3. Get it up and down an average of 40 percent of the time. This leaves us a few shots to play with

4. Limit three putts and average 32 putts per round. 2nd most important stat.

Get in the habit of keeping your vital statistics of your rounds of golf. FIR, GIR, Putts/round and up and down pct. If you are looking for a website to keep stats and track your progress, I suggest ShotbyShot.com.  This will give you starting point and show you how close you are to reaching this barrier that most golfers can’t cross. Of course, this is just my opinion and there are many factors that go into a golf game that help make up the level of player but this is a great place to start. Here are a couple of ideas that just might get you over the hump if you are trying to turn 81 into 79.

1. Use the 80/20 rule. If you do find trouble, don’t be Phil Mickelson and try to hit the career shot. If you can’t pull it off at least 80 percent of the time, play it safe. Punch it out and make your bogey.

2. Aim for the middle of the green. Refer to my past post of the stop light theory. There are very few green lights out there, proceed with caution and hit more greens.

3. Work on your mental side. Focus on pre-shot routine and TARGET and quit playing golf swing. Ask yourself 2 questions before every shot……”Where’s my target?” and “How do I want to play this shot”…..Sure beats standing over it saying, “Just don’t hit it in the water”

Best of Luck with your golf and enjoy the journey. I will see you on the lesson tee.

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Guru……….. call 704.542.7635 to schedule a lesson or check out our website at danarader.com