How Often Do You Practice “The Nine Shots”?
Hank Haney recently said that when he was teaching Tiger Woods he would continually practice “The Nine Shots”on the driving range, a practice drill that is highly effective in mind and body synchronization and increasing your repertoire of shots, which are crucial in lowering scores.
So what are “The Nine Shots”?
High Fade
Regular fade
Low fade
High Straight
Regular Straight
Low Straight
High draw
Regular draw
Low draw
How do you hit the 9 shots? It’s not easy, but if you become a free member of GSOM, this is one of the weekly drills we cover. You can sign up at the bottom of this email.
This forms the basis of a great practice or warm-up session. Over time this will give you heightened mind-body awareness in that you are instinctively aware of what your body needs to do to play a shot you are visualizing. There is no conscious control of your swing. The more you can learn to play and practice using visualization and feel, instead of having technical thoughts and letting negative interferences in, the better you will become.
Being able to control both the trajectory and shape of the shot is integral to a good scoring game. In windy conditions it helps enormously to be able to hit the ball low into the wind and high when it’s behind. There are obvious advantages for being able to shape the ball with a drive or approach shot. Realizing that there are several ways of getting to the ball to the target and some are more effective than others, is a big part of improving your golf game.
Next time you are on the range, work on The Nine Shots. In addition to increasing your visualization and feel, it will tell you a lot about your swing. E.g. If you are having trouble hitting it high, or hitting a fade, try to figure out why.
Give this drill a try this instead of working on numerous swing drills and hitting to the same target and I’ve no doubt you’ll see the results on the course.
About the Author
David MacKenzie is an inner game of golf coach and golf publisher and lives in Washington DC. He currently runs Golf State of Mind, Ltd, a teaching program designed to help golfers remove self imposed negative mental interference and let their true potential emerge.
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Great article David, something to think about next time i’m at the driving range.
Ya. Thanks. I better start reading more of your emails. Later, BDR
very interesting article.its a new tips from the expert that we need to follow if we want to succeed like tiger.