Upon recommendation of "Every Shot Must Have a Purpose", a friend and I recently played nine holes where we verbalized our intentions for each shot from tee to green. The book recommends the drill as a practice of truly committing to each shot. Something about telling your playing competitor exactly what you are visualizing for each shot without hesitation seems to lead to a higher percentage of self fulfilling prophecies. There seems to be a trend of significantly better shots occurring when you call your shot in a very specific, matter of fact way as if it is a foregone conclusion(ie. I have 149 yards so I'm going to hit this 9 iron directly at the overhanging limb and cut it to the flag). Conversely It was fascinating to see my friend's and my poor shots occur in instances where we said things like, "I'm going to try and hit this 9 iron just left of the flag with a little cut". I'm excited to go further down the rabbit hole with this drill and see if I can have such conversations with myself or caddie in competition without holding up pace of play. The phenomenon reminded me of Yoda's famous, "There is no try, either do or do not". Next time you have a chance, call your shots out loud, truly believe that what you said is true, and I think you will be impressed by the results.
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