9 to 3 Golf Consistency Drill

If I had to pick one drill that was the most important for every aspect of your golf swing — pass shots, knock-downs, punch shots, all of it — it would be the 9 to 3 drill. Think of it like a clock: nine o’clock to three o’clock. That range really encompasses the entire golf swing fundamentals. This drill can make or break your game. With just a “here to here” motion, the most critical moves in your swing start to take shape. You can develop your swing indoors, in your living room, without ever hitting a ball — and you’re going to make massive improvement. We’re going to start by learning how to do this nine to three movement correctly and in detail, so you can get into a perfect impact position and a perfect release every time. Just like with everything else in the golf swing, it all comes down to your body movements — getting those big muscles to do their job so your hands and arms don’t have to compensate. Let’s strip it back to the simple core — that’s where people make their biggest mistakes, and fixing it is what leads to a huge, immediate leap forward in your game.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is get set up correctly — arms across your chest, or even taking the arms out of the equation at this point. To make a proper nine to three swing, all you need to do is rotate and return. That’s a 90-degree turn. All I’m checking is that I’m making a full turn into my trail side, with my lead foot staying relatively quiet. If I try to force my lead shoulder across early, everything falls apart. Instead, I post up by driving my lead foot into the ground and rotating through. You’ll notice that my shoulders end up dead square at impact, but I never consciously moved my shoulders — I’m moving my body, my trunk, my core, the big muscles. These are much easier to control and get into a perfect impact position. And then we’re done. The whole golf swing is done there.

So that’s really just the nine to six move using your body only. The only reason you’d ever continue on to three o’clock is momentum. You never, ever try to move your body to get to the follow-through position. The follow-through is a result of everything that happened leading up to that moment. As far as you’re concerned, the golf swing is done at impact. So when you don’t have any momentum, when you don’t have your arms or club out in front of you, stop and check your position. The things you’re going to check: first, your weight. I want weight firmly driven down through the center of my lead ankle. I’m nice and rock solid on that lead side, which means my lead glute — my butt muscle — is engaged. My lead knee is going to be straight. This is another really common mistake I see all the time.

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Golfers come into impact like this with a bent lead knee, and there’s no stability. That leads directly to a decrease in swing consistency, because as your knee gives, everything shifts — your swing plane, your path, and the angles you’ve created. We want to maintain those and keep everything solid and quiet at impact. That means a firm lead leg. If you’ve ever heard the term “hitting into the lead side,” what they’re really saying is: lead leg posted, lead glute, lead quad, lead hamstring — all engaged — and weight driven down through the ankle with a straight lead knee. Now, it’s not hyperextended like you’re trying to lock it out. Just think straight, like you’re standing talking to someone. You don’t want locked knees, but you can’t have them flexed either, because that doesn’t allow for a stable base.

At impact, everything is dynamically moving through the hitting area — and that’s exactly when you want things to quiet down dramatically. That’s our first checkpoint. The second checkpoint, starting from the ground up, is the trail foot. I want to make sure I don’t see the trail heel come up too early. Why is this so important? As I’ve covered in another video, when that trail heel comes up prematurely during the nine to six move, watch what happens to the tush line. Nine o’clock down into impact — I’ve lost that tush line. I’ve lost my spine angle, which makes my swing plane shift and causes the club to work out to the trail side, leading to a shallow, inside approach. That’s a great recipe for a big block or a snap hook. To prevent that, we want to make sure that as you shift and post up on the lead side, the trail foot can roll to the inside — but it stays down.

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