Easily one of the greatest things about golf is how every round can be your game. It could be the day you beat your best score, the day you land that hole-in-one, it might even be the day you finally beat that one annoying friend that never loses.
Golf is full of great achievements and you never know when they will come. One great achievement is breaking 90. For some golfers, breaking 90 can seem like an impossible feat, but it doesn’t have to.
You don’t need to master golf to shoot in the 80s. In fact, we’re so confident about this that we think we can help you get there. As a result, we’ve put together this post that outlines the key things you need to know and do if you want to consistently break 90.
It doesn’t matter what level you’re currently at, we’ll help you get there with some simple tips and useful explanations. Let’s get started, shall we?
What Does Breaking 90 Mean?
Before we go any further, you need to know exactly what breaking 90 means in golf (see also: How to Break 80 in Golf?). The simplest definition of break 90 is “shooting an 18-hole score of 89 or less”. Sounds pretty simple right, but what does it mean?
Most championship/regulation golf courses have a par of 72. If you are to break 90, that means you need to shoot 17-over or better. As a result, you need to average slightly better than bogey golf. In fact, you could make par on just one hole and then score 17 bogeys and still break 90.
We like looking at it this way as it makes the achievement seem a lot more achievable. Of course, breaking 90 won’t be easy, but it is doable.
How You Can Break 90?
Now you know more about breaking 90, we can’t start to show you how you can go about doing it yourself. In the next part of this post, we have listed a number of key things you need to focus on to give yourself the best chance at success.
If you take the tips and points we make onboard, you will dramatically increase your chance of breaking 90. Let’s get to it!
1. Short Game Practice Is Key
If we had to give you one piece of advice, it would be to practice your short game as much as possible. To put it simply, you can’t start to learn how to break 90 without starting to work on your short game first.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a great hitter of the ball, working on your short game will help you save valuable strokes in and around the hole.
Practicing from the fringe, the fairway, the sand, and the rough, learn how to hit different types of chips. Focus your training on trying to hit the ball within 10 feet of the hole.
This gives you a great chance to putt the ball in one. You can then learn to eliminate strokes by working on your ability to lag the ball next to the hole.
2. Review Your Gear
We’re not saying you have to spend big bucks on golfing gear but you will need to review the equipment you currently use. It could be that the clubs you use are holding you back. You need to work out if the equipment you use supports your game.
You also need to understand your equipment and how it works best.
Your clubs should be fairly new and made by a reliable brand. The same can be said with your irons. However, you should also make sure that your irons suit your game. You probably don’t want blades.
Finally, simple golf accessories like a golf towel, umbrella, and glove will improve your overall game and experience.
3. Game Management
Learning how to manage the game better will give you a much better chance of breaking 90. When it comes to breaking 90, you should focus more on scoring pars and bogeys. You don’t need to take any risks to score birdies to score 89 or less.
This should improve your game management when in tricky situations. For example, if you find yourself stuck in deep grass play smart by heading back to the fairway for an easy bogey. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Also, avoid hitting any shots you haven’t already practiced.
4. Improve Your Golf Fitness
You should never forget that golf is a physical sport. Often overlooked, your physical fitness can be the difference between scoring 95 and 85. Do you need to work on your overall fitness levels?
If the answer is yes, you should work harder to condition yourself to be up for the challenge. Simply working out throughout the week can increase your body strength and fitness, giving you the fitness you need to break 90.
5. Avoid Penalty Strokes
Avoiding penalty strokes is absolutely crucial to breaking 90. Any penalty strokes will kill your scorecard and quickly ruin your game. Saving a bogey after receiving a penalty stroke isn’t easy.
It’s worth knowing that most penalty strokes come from wayward drives off the tee. If you aren’t careful, this will happen to you too. With that in mind, try to control your tee shots. Always choose the right club that will help you find the fairway and stay away from your driver if it’s causing you problems.
6. Monitor Your Game
Simply monitoring your game can help you eliminate any mistakes and identify room for improvement. Using your scorecard, you can document putts, fairway hits, the number of greens you hit in regulation, and any penalty strokes.
At the end of each round, you can look for common patterns in your gameplay. You can then use these patterns to identify any flaws in your game. From there, simply work more on your flaws so that you can improve your game.
7. Commit To Your Practice Schedule
Above all else, you have to commit to practice. While it can be a grind at times, you will not improve your game without regular practice. Therefore, you have to fully commit to your practice schedule. On top of that, you have to also commit time to getting yourself in the best physical shape possible.
The more you follow your practice, the better you will become. We highly recommend building a solid plan that you can follow. This will give you the motivation and guidance you need to keep going.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, all the things you can do to give yourself the best chance of breaking 90. In this post, we’ve shown you what it means to break 90 and what you need to do if you’re going to give yourself the best chance of achieving it.
Whilst there are a lot of things to look at and think about, regular training and practice are by far the best thing you can do. By practicing regularly, you can improve your game and eliminate errors. This will bring your score down and help you eliminate unnecessary strokes.
Now you’ve made your way through this post, your hard work begins, so get your clubs out and hit the course.
Hi, my name is Garratt Shmidt and I have been playing golf in my spare time for almost a decade.
Before I found a passion for golf, I didn’t see the appeal. I thought it was slow, repetitive, and quite frankly boring.
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