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Can the average golfer break 80?

Only about 2 percent of all golfers ever break 80, which generally is considered the Holy Grail of scoring. To legitimately break 80 — no improved lies; no 3-foot gimmes; no free drop from out of bounds — is to breathe the rarefied air of good, if not great golf.

dispatch.com - Rob Oller commentary: Breaking 80 earns spot in golf's top 2 percent

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Rob Oller, The Columbus Dispatch

Eleven of the world’s best golfers failed to break 80 last week during the PGA Championship.

Chumps.

Break 80? Who can’t do that? Uh … I couldn’t, at least not for the past 40 years. Based on surveys, you probably can’t, either. Only about 2 percent of all golfers ever break 80, which generally is considered the Holy Grail of scoring. To legitimately break 80 — no improved lies; no 3-foot gimmes; no free drop from out of bounds — is to breathe the rarefied air of good, if not great golf. It was high on my bucket list, but realistically out of reach given my limited play, diminishing hand-eye coordination and general clumsiness, as evidenced by an increasing propensity to catch elbows and knees on door frames and table legs. Certainly, golfers who struggle to break 100 — it has been estimated that fewer than 25 percent of all golfers ever make it — hold little sympathy for the break-90 golfer who whines about shooting 81. Similarly, those who shoot in the 80s are awed by lower handicaps, just as scratch golfers are amazed at how pros make breaking par look so easy. “I broke 70 at age 11, which was a big deal. I remember that,” said Justin Rose, who won his first major championship in June at the U.S. Open. Boo Weekley was 14 when he broke 80 and 15 when he broke 70. Ryan Moore and Bo Van Pelt each first broke 80 at age 11, while Angel Cabrera broke par (72) at age 14. Keegan Bradley broke par at age 12, and five-time major winner Phil Mickelson shot 73 at age 10, beating his father for the first time. Jim Furyk finished bogey-bogey to miss a chance to catch Jason Dufner on Sunday in the final round of the PGA Championship. But Furyk, 43, was less upset about his stumbling finish at Oak Hill than he was in the summer of 1983, when he double-bogeyed the 72nd hole of a junior tournament to shoot 80. “I was 13 years old and so mad at myself,” Furyk said of his failure to break 80 for the first time in tournament play. “Then the first tournament of the next year I shot 79, and the rest of the year I shot in the mid-to-low 70s.” Bill Haas followed a similar path, saying that breaking 80 becomes much easier after the first time.

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Yeah, well, I’m still waiting for the “easier” to kick in. That’s right, after decades of trying to reach the mystical 79, I finally shot it a few weeks ago at Windy Knoll in Springfield, which is something neither Gary Woodland (80) nor Darren Clarke (82) could say at the PGA Championship on Sunday. But while Woodland and Clarke undoubtedly will break 80 the next time they tee it up, my game has gone the way of water — back to seeking its own level. My brief shining moment was but a flash in the pan. Now, all is black iron skillet. “When you first start playing golf, you try to break 100,” Furyk said after I mentioned my break-80 moment earlier this month at the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron. “Then it gets tougher as you try to break 90. And tougher to break 80, and now it’s going to get a hell of a lot harder to break 70.”

Break 70? I laughed in his general direction.

“It’s a big jump. Each milestone seems like it should take ‘X’ amount of work to get there,” Furyk said. “But it gets exponentially harder the older you get.” Ten years ago, I took lessons to learn what it would take to break 80. The lessons worked in that I learned it would take a miracle. Just such a miracle occurred on a recent July day when, after shooting a 37 on the first nine holes, I set foot on the 18th tee needing anything less than a triple-bogey 8 to break 80. I carded a three-putt 7 for a 79, my fingers wrapped so tightly around the putter grip that my playing partner suggested I carry an oil can instead of a 6-iron. My main emotion was relief, not ecstasy. It was nice to be able to breathe again.

Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.

roller@dispatch.com

@rollerCD

dispatch.com - Rob Oller commentary: Breaking 80 earns spot in golf's top 2 percent

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