The article below was written by Hannah Holden of National Club Golfer.
How to break 70 in golf
I met up with PGA Professional Jack Backhouse to take a look at five tips to break 70 in golf…
Have a repeatable ball flight
Lots of golfers overthink their long game when it comes to shooting lower scores. Despite popular beliefs, with your tee shot you don’t need to shape the ball in both directions to shoot lower scores.
Lots of tour players have shown us you can play exceptionally well while exclusively hitting one-shot shape off the tee. Just take a look at how much money Dustin Johnson has won recently…
The most important thing is to have a repeatable ball flight off the tee so you know what shot shape you are going to hit and can set your aim and target relative to that.
Dominate the Par-5’s
Par 5’s are statistically where the best players make their scores. Hitting driver off the tee and giving yourself a chance to get to the green in two is a huge part of driving down your scoring.
If you want to break 70 you need to be making birdies and the best way to do this is to get to as many par-5 greens in two as possible.
Have a good pitching control system
To shoot in the 60s, you need to hit your wedges close. You are never going to have a full shot into the green each time so having a system where you can hit numerous distances with all your wedges is key.
Practising your pitch shots and being able to hit numerous yardages with the same club is hugely important for driving down your scoring.
Don’t miss a green inside 100 yards
When players get inside 100 yards, it can be easy to get too aggressive and start firing at pins, but the last thing you want to do from this distance is get too aggressive and end up missing the green in regulation.
Even with a wedge in our hand, we want to be picking a strategic target that gets us on the green and gives us a birdie putt.
Be bulletproof inside 5ft
You can’t shoot low scores if you’re not holing out from near the pin. Five foot and in, is statistically the most important length putt to hole. This is because strokes gained-wise, you need to hole four 5-footers to balance out missing one.
To be good at 5 footers you really just need to dial in your aim and face angle at impact which can be done with simple drills on the putting green.
Using tee pegs on each side of your target line creates a small gate for you to thread your ball through. Practising this on the putting green will make it much easier to hole those knee knockers next time you are out on the golf course.
