Welcome to Day 9 — the culmination of the "9 Days to Amazing Ball Striking" series. Today you'll put everything together and execute the ultimate ball striking drill, practicing all nine ball flights and discovering exactly where your game needs the most work.
You'll also get an overall score that allows you to track your improvement over time — giving you a concrete benchmark for your progress.
Choose Your Target
To execute this drill, you need to select a specific target on the driving range.
If you're fortunate enough to have a green or a large bunker out on the range, that's the ideal target. You can simply count how many attempts it takes to land on the green or in the bunker.
If you don't have a ready-made target area, pick out flags, trees, or landmarks in the distance to define your landing zone.
Use the same target consistently over time so you can accurately track your progress and measure how your ball striking improves.
How to Use the 9-Shot Scorecard
Once you've selected your target area, you can begin working through all nine ball flights.
Your scorecard is simply a sheet of paper divided into nine blocks — like a tic-tac-toe board.
The columns represent ball curvature: the left column is for fades, the center is for straight shots, and the right column is for draws. The rows represent trajectory: the bottom row is low, the middle is medium, and the top row is high.
Start at the bottom right with the low draw. As soon as you land one in your target area, move on to the medium draw, then the high draw. Continue through the low straight, medium straight, high straight, then finish with the low fade, medium fade, and high fade.
Write down how many attempts it took to hit the target with each specified shot shape in the corresponding square on your scorecard. If you're a beginning golfer, choose a larger target — as your skills develop, progressively shrink the target area for a greater challenge.
The completed scorecard becomes a powerful diagnostic tool that reveals exactly where your ball striking needs the most work.
Your Best Shot May Surprise You
When Rotary Swing Instructor Clay Ballard first started using this drill, he'd played a draw his entire career — from high school through college and onto the mini tours. He always believed it was his strongest shot.
He was genuinely surprised to discover that his fade was actually far more consistent than his draw.
The fade didn't feel as good. He didn't think it looked as impressive, and it typically flew about 10 yards shorter than his draw. But when he compared his three draw scores in the right column against his three fade scores on the left, the fade numbers were consistently lower.
Clay's fade was more effective and more reliable than his draw — and when he started playing a fade as his stock shot, he immediately started hitting significantly more greens in regulation.
Try It Yourself: The Complete Nine-Shot Drill
Choose your target area in the distance and place an alignment rod on the ground along the target line for reference. Each of the nine shots requires a different combination of the skills you've developed throughout this series.
Start with the low draw. Remember the mechanics for both the draw and the low trajectory?
- Adjust your stance slightly to the right and swing down your feet line or a little to the right to start the ball right of target
- Roll the club face closed through impact to produce draw spin
- Bow your left wrist forward to deloft the club face and produce a low trajectory
If any of these skills don't feel comfortable yet, go back and review the individual lessons from Days 1-8 before continuing.
When you land a low draw in your target area, write down your score and move on to the medium draw.
For the medium draw, the draw technique stays identical — but instead of bowing the left wrist aggressively to deloft the club, you'll allow it to bow just slightly for a normal, neutral trajectory.
Work on that shot until you land a medium draw in the target area, record your score, then move on to the high draw. Same draw mechanics, but now keep the left wrist completely flat through impact to preserve maximum loft.
Now Hit the Fades
After completing your three draws, turn your attention to the left column: low fade, medium fade, and high fade. We'll tackle the straight shots last.
Start with the low fade:
- Adjust your stance slightly to the left and swing down your feet line or a little to the left to start the ball left of target
- Hold the club face slightly open through impact to produce left-to-right fade spin
- Bow your left wrist forward to deloft the club face for a low trajectory
The fade technique remains identical across all three shots. The only variable is the amount of wrist bow — controlling your loft while maintaining the same face angle and path.
Work through all three fades, then move on to the center column.
"Straight" Shots: The Toughest Challenge
We saved the straight shots for last because, in reality, there's no such thing as a perfectly straight golf shot.
Every shot curves to some degree, so you'll need to define a margin for error for these — scaled to your skill level.
If you're a scratch golfer, your margin might be one or two yards to either side — anything within that window counts as straight.
If you're a beginning golfer, you might define five yards left or right as "straight" for now. As your ball striking improves, progressively tighten that definition.
Let's say you're working on "Medium Straight." Your shot comes out a little low with a slight draw.
By now you know exactly how to correct both issues. Instead of letting your hands roll over, focus on keeping the club face slightly more open — straightening the left wrist so the face stays more vertical rather than turning left. To raise the trajectory, check your left wrist position and hold it flatter through impact to preserve the club's natural loft.
Watch the Ball for Real-Time Feedback
Throughout this entire drill, the ball itself is your best coach. Watch the ball flight on every shot. Does it need to go higher? Lower? More left? More right? You control all of those variables with your left wrist.
As we covered on Day 8, you can also move the ball slightly back or forward in your stance to adjust trajectory, and modify your stance alignment to control curvature.
The ball flight itself tells you exactly what needs to change for the next shot.
Don't rely on what you think you're doing. You may feel like you're really bowing your left wrist toward the ground, but if you get a big, high ball flight, you'll know it wasn't enough. Trust what you see, not what you feel — and adjust your body accordingly.
The more you practice this drill, the better and better you'll become — guaranteed. No longer will you block shots to the right or hook them to the left with no idea how to fix it.
You'll be able to diagnose and correct those issues on the fly — after one bad shot instead of going weeks or months repeating the same mistake. If you want additional insight into your swing mechanics, try a free AI golf lesson that analyzes your swing path, face angle, and body positions in real time.
Interpreting Your Scorecard
Let's examine one of Clay's scorecards and see how to extract actionable insights from the data.
The three boxes in the right column are the low, medium, and high draws. The center column contains the straight shots, and the left column holds the fades. Each row corresponds to one of the three trajectories.
- Add up the total score in each row to compare your low, medium, and high ball flights
- Add up the total score in each column to see how your draw compares with your fade
Looking at Clay's scores by row: he totaled 6 on the low shots, 5 on normal trajectory, and 9 on high ball flight shots.
Examining it by columns: his total draw score was 8, straight shots also totaled 8, and his fades were just 4. This clearly shows that during this particular session, Clay was significantly more proficient at hitting a fade than a draw.
Adding all nine boxes gives him an overall score of 20 for this round.
Where Are Your Strengths?
You can't draw definitive conclusions from a single scorecard, but as you repeat the drill over time, unmistakable patterns will emerge.
You may discover that you're more naturally consistent with a fade or a draw — and as Clay experienced, your favorite shot may not turn out to be your strongest one.
In Clay's case, his fade is statistically stronger, but he prefers the draw. His draw has more compression, flies farther, and simply feels better than the fade.
However, the data consistently shows he hits the target more often with the fade. In a scoring situation, that's what he plays — while working on the range to improve his draw over time.
Using Your Scorecard to Improve
Clay's scorecard revealed that his highest scores — his weakest areas — were in the draw column and the high trajectory row.
Now that he's identified his specific weaknesses, he can go back and review the appropriate lessons from Days 1-8, work through those targeted drills, and then return to play the nine-shot game again to measure improvement.
The straight column is slightly different to interpret. The straight category primarily shows how well you're controlling and minimizing your natural fade or draw.
If your highest score is in the straight column, the best approach is simply to keep playing the full nine-shot game rather than isolating one particular ball flight.
Straight shots test how precisely you can control ball curvature, and the most effective way to improve that control is through the complete drill.
Track Your Progress Over Time
In addition to analyzing trends and working on problem areas, track your overall score from session to session.
Clay's overall score for this round was 20 — of course, he's a Rotary Swing instructor. If you're a high handicapper or beginning golfer, don't be surprised if your initial score is closer to 100.
It's a demanding game. You're not just trying to hit all nine ball flights correctly — you're also landing them in a specified target area.
The target size you choose will make the game easier or harder, but it's going to be challenging at first regardless. As you practice, you'll see your scores drop rapidly and significantly.
The more you work on this drill at the range, the lower your overall score will fall. Once you get back on the course, you'll notice a dramatic improvement in your ability to control ball flight under pressure.
Keep practicing this drill, track your scores, and review your weak spots regularly. When you start seeing scores in the teens — or even single digits in individual boxes — you'll know you're becoming an elite-level ball striker. You'll be hitting greens with confidence and controlling your ball flight like never before. To complement your range work, get a free AI swing analysis to see exactly how your swing mechanics stack up against the GOAT model.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Clay explains the drill
Scorecard showing all nine ball flights
Roll the face closed for a draw
Hold the face open for a fade
Hitting a straight shot
Adding the columns
Adding the rows
Add up all the boxes
