Breaking the score of 120 in golf is a milestone many golfers hit during their first year playing. It is nice to break 120, but not impressive at all. Breaking 120 usually means that you still make an enormous amount of mistakes playing golf, and that you are still a green beginner.
Breaking 120 is an achievement that is within the reach of just about any golfer.
Therefore, you may wonder: what percentage of golfers can break 120?
In this article, we will tell you exactly what percentage of golfers can break 120, backed up by statistics.
What Percentage Of Golfers Can Break 120?
According to statistics, around 89%-99% of golfers are capable of breaking a score of 120 in golf, making it an achievement almost every golfer will statistically achieve in their playing time. Breaking 120 is a milestone almost anyone can hit within the first year of playing golf.
Breaking a score of 120 in golf is a milestone achievement that only beginners will be chasing, as it is not too difficult to hit. Even if you break 120 in golf, you are still a low level beginner golfer. You have a very long way to go before becoming a good or decent golfer.
If you are barely breaking 120, it means you are shooting around 48 strokes more than a scratch golfer, depending on the par of the golf course played on (the par is around 72 for 18 hole golf courses).
Breaking 120 in golf means you are committing an ginormous amount of mistakes out on the golf course, and you are still very much under average golfer skill level. Breaking 120 means you are still trying to grasp and incorporate the very basics of golf.
You will not receive any praise for breaking 120, as almost anyone can do so. However, if you have some kind of handicap or disability, breaking 120 is a great goal to have.
Now that you understand the skill level required to break 120 in golf, let’s take a look at the statistics:
-According to a statistical study conducted by Sports Ruby, more than 95% of golfers can break 120;
-According to the USGA, around 99% of golfers can break 120;
-According to the National Golf Foundation, around 89% of golfers can break 120;
-Other online polls show that 92% of golfers can break 120.
It is important to note that these statistics can be skewed in many ways, including higher performing players being more willing to share their scores, the size of the statistical sample, location of the sample members, and so many more.
The general consensus across most statistical studies is that around 89-99% of golfers can break 120 in golf. Nearly every golfer in the world can break 120 if given enough time to practice.
Tips To Break 120 In Golf Score
Trying to break 120 in golf score is an easy challenge that you can complete in your first year playing golf. It is common for people to break 120 in their first year playing golf.
Breaking 120 consistently does not mean you are even a decent golfer at all, but it is a starting point. If you are just barely able to break 120, it would still put you largely under the average golfer in terms of skill.
Breaking 120 is achievable for almost anyone, even without any particular talent. Practicing enough will usually lead just about anyone without disabilities to breaking 120. Even with disabilities, it might be possible.
Down below are some of the elements, including the Keys To Success As A Golfer, that you can implement in your game to improve your golf score effectively.
These tips will especially be useful to you if you struggle to break 120, or lack talent; hard work does pay off if you cannot seem to break 120 just yet. To be honest, most people will not really need to follow the tips below to eventually break 120, but you will get there faster by following them.
Set A Dedicated Practice Schedule
It will be more challenging to break 120 in score without a dedicated practice routine to get better at golf. If you want to break 120, putting in work and practice will get you there faster.
Fortunately, breaking 120 is not too difficult to do within your first year playing golf, even if you are not playing day in and day out. To break 120, you can play golf sparsely, but we still recommend having a dedicated practice schedule.
Breaking 120 requires a lot less practice than if you are attempting to break 70, 80, 90, or 100. Remember, breaking 120 is still not enough to make you even an average golfer, which is why you may not need much practice to break 120.
If you do decide to practice, we recommend spending some time both in golf driving ranges, and on golf courses.
The driving range allows you to practice shots with small time intervals in between each one, whereas the golf course is where you put what you learned to use in a higher stakes situation.
Practicing more never hurts as long as you are not overtraining or risking injury. A good starting point from which to start to break 120 is the following:
-Driving range practice once a month, but more often is better
-Play 1 round of golf once a month, but more often is better
If you feel you still have some golf in you and can safely do more, add another session at the driving range or the golf course.
Get Golf Lessons
If you cannot quite break 120, it might be time to get some golf lessons. Find a decent coach, and they will be able to pick out what you can improve in your game.
At your level, it does not matter much whether you pay for group lessons, or private lessons, as you are still learning the basics. However, private lessons are more personalized and tailored to you, so they will be a little better, but more expensive.
It sometimes pays huge dividends to have someone more experienced than you, such as a coach, look at your game from an outside perspective. It should only take a few small tweaks and an extra tip in golf course management to get you to finally break 120.
Although you can definitely break 120 eventually without ever taking golf lessons, taking them will accelerate your growth.
Rest Sufficiently
Rest is extremely important and comes in multiple forms, such as not performing excessive amounts of exercise, sleeping enough (at least 8 hours per night), and eating the right foods.
Without rest, you will feel sluggish, and your body will not have the best building blocks to produce the best results. Without rest, your body cannot heal and grow stronger from your training.
Rest sufficiently, and you will increase the value of the practice and hard work you put in.
Work Out And Develop Your Flexibility
Another important and excellent path to take to improve your golf scores into sub-120’s is to work out and develop your flexibility.
By working out, you can increase your muscle strength, which will give you more power with which to swing your club and hit the ball. This added power can easily add a few tens of yards to your carry distance over time, which can save you some strokes, especially off the tee.
You can check out our golf specific gym workout here: Golf Specific Gym Workout.
In addition, becoming more flexible will lessen your risks of injury, and give your joints more range of motion, leading to more comfortable and fluid shots.
Go For Safe Shots
If you are not breaking 120 yet, then you should never go for aggressive shots off the tee and elsewhere. Instead, you should always go for safe shots.
If you are not breaking 120 yet, you are still committing an average of about 48 mistakes over par. To break 120, the quickest way is to limit how many mistakes you make per round of golf. This can be most easily achieved by going for safe shots.
In fact, safe shots shine in terms of their advantageous probabilities if your skill is not really good yet. To illustrate this, going for aggressive shots might get you your desired perfect result 1 out of 10 times, but the 9 other times, you end up in a bunker or in the rough, which is terrible for your overall score.
Going for safe shots dramatically increases the probabilities of you performing a shot that has an acceptable, playable outcome. With safe shots, you might hit the ball in the rough 1 or 2 times, but the rest of the time, your ball will land within the intended playing zones.
Go for shots that you know you can perform decently the vast majority of time. As you get better at ball control and golf in general, your level of risk for harder shots goes down, and so, those harder shots become more accessible to you.
Get A Good Diet And Nutrition
Adopting a good nutrition and diet plan is important to be a great golfer. The right nutrition will allow you to feel more energized, to recover quicker, and to make muscular gains as you train.
Remember that exhausted sensation you feel after you eat a burger from a fast food chain. Not so great, huh? This is what you want to avoid.
Focus on eating a good and healthy diet that will provide the necessary building blocks (like protein) for your body to perform and experience growth at an optimal level.
Film Your Technique To Discover Potential Improvements
It can be quite hard to know whether you are performing golf technique well if you are alone. One solution would be to get private golf lessons, in which the coach can point you in the right direction.
However, in the absence of a coach, there is another solution: simply film yourself and compare your technique to that of professional players. Using this method, you will be able to see exactly what you could be doing better, and fix the faulty elements.
Try experimenting by filming your swing technique from different camera angles.
Finally, if you are far from breaking 120, you can also get some group lessons. They are cheaper, but the instruction is a lot less personalized. Although group lessons are not tailored to your personal needs, they can help a good deal if you still hesitate about golf technique a lot.
Adopt An Athlete Mindset (especially if you lack talent)
While sacrificing everything else than golf in your life is not required at all to eventually break 120, adopting an athlete’s mindset will get you to breaking 120 the quickest.
Seriously though, breaking 120 does not require adopting an athlete’s mindset. An athlete’s mindset just makes it easier.
Most of the best golfers in the world are legitimate athletes in some way, shape, or form. Therefore, if you would like to replicate results close to those of professionals as quickly as possible, you need to also replicate their good habits.
Fully committing to an athlete’s mindset implies living your life like an athlete would: sacrificing late night parties for sleep, junk food for nutritious food, certain hobbies for golf practice.
Athletes make more sacrifices to become good at their sport than many people realize. Although you really do not need to sacrifice everything else in your life to break 120, the more you focus on golf, the quicker your results will be.
Most golfers do not need to live this way to break 120, but they will do so quicker if they do. If you lack talent, then it will help to incorporate some of the good habits that professional golfers incorporate. Even if you are not gifted, breaking 120 is possible if you work hard enough.
Improve Your Golf Course Management Skills
If you have not already implemented effective golf course management notions inside your game of golf, then this may revolutionize your scores.
Effective golf course management is the set of all decisions you take on a golf course, from the club you choose to the direction you aim, and more.
Some decisions are objectively better than others, but which one is best highly depends on the golf course you play on and where you stand on it.
To learn the fundamental notions of great golf course management, read our guide: How To Master Golf Course Management?.
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What Percentage Of Golfers Can Break 120 In Score?
Conclusion
There you go! After reading this article, you have discovered exactly what percentage of golfers are capable of breaking 120 in golf score. Furthermore, you learned different tips you can implement to eventually break 120, thanks to smart work and practice.
How close are you to breaking 120? How quickly did you break 120? Let us know in the comments down below!
