Most recreational golfers, if playing by the rules, never break 100 in their lifetime. I've been out of it for about 15 years, but the average score used to be around 102 despite the enormous gains in technology/game improvement. I had a friend that I played with for about 5 years. I was close to scratch and always played the ball down and by the rules.(you need to if you play any competitive golf) He asked me one time how many strokes I thought he was getting playing the ball up and not counting every stroke. He thought it was around 3-5 strokes a round. I said it was about 20 or more. He decided to play the next round by the rules. It ended being 23 more than he usally recorded on that course. He quit shortly after that. His problems were mental. He had the skills to play much better, but would make bad decisions selecting clubs. His ego would not let him make overall good strategy decisions.