How To Play Bunker Shots

Golf Monthly

In this video, Dan Grieve, head professional at Woburn Golf Club, explains how to play bunker shots with some simple tips and drills.

Transcript

00:00Hi, Dan Grief here, Head Professional at Web & Golf Club and here we're talking about the

00:08greenside bunker shot and the technique in which you need to be able to splash that ball out every

00:12time. So it really all begins with setup. So I like to see golfers standing nice and wide,

00:18really very important to create a nice wide base when you play these shots because the biggest

00:22fault I see is the golfer moves side to side and that creates thin shots and fat shots. So let's

00:27get really wide like a driver and get this left foot turned out around about 45 degrees and what

00:32that allows you to do then is push your left knee over your foot and get this right leg kicking in.

00:37So you'll find the majority of your weight, perhaps up to 80%, is forward on this left side.

00:42Now for this soft sand you can afford to allow your right shoulder to drop back a little bit.

00:47You don't want to get your upper body stacking over your left leg too much this way. So allow the right

00:51shoulder to drop a little bit lower and we'll have the ball position just inside the left heel.

00:57Very important as well to make sure that the shaft line mirrors that so we have the shaft line neutral,

01:03not hands don't go ahead and they don't come back. Really nice and neutral. The face can be slightly

01:09open because I'm standing far further away from the ball, lots of knee flex. Okay, that allows me to

01:15get more into the sand and really feel like I'm rooted and strong down into the sand and then from there

01:21it's about making sure that we keep the loft and bounce on the club going back and then through

01:26the same thing making sure the chest turns. So I'll just hit one here.

01:32You see it splashes nicely there. Now one of the things that allowed me to play that shot really

01:36nicely was the fact I kept the loft and bounce on and here's a really simple drill you can do is put

01:41some sand on the club face and see if you can keep that sand on and see if you can throw it over that

01:46shoulder there over your back shoulder. Now if you do that that means the left wrist is getting cupped

01:50and the loft and bounce is on and equally you can put some sand on the club face and see if you can

01:55throw it over your front shoulder and if you can do that you've got the same thing going on there

02:00where the club face isn't turning over you're holding the loft and bounce on and creating that

02:04nice splash shot. So one of the real skills when you get into a bunker is being able to read the lie

02:08and make relevant adaptions for the lie. Now we don't always get that lovely soft fluffy sand that

02:13we had for the first shot sometimes the bunkers might be have less sand in they might be more

02:18compact and we need to slightly change how we how we approach the shot because if you're going there

02:23with this one-dimensional approach of just using your standard splash shot you'll um you'll have a lie

02:29like this okay and then you will play the shot and there we go off it goes it's thinned you'll do well

02:35to find your ball so there was nothing wrong with my technique there for the standard splash shot

02:40what was wrong was my intelligence i wasn't able to read the lie very well i wasn't able to adapt

02:45how i put the bounce into the sand so when you get a tight lie like this you have to set up slightly

02:50differently so we'll keep the stance the same you can very much get the weight forward on the left side

02:55but the shoulder line will now be more left as well so you get your left shoulder more over your left foot

03:00and that's this is simply going to steepen your angle of attack it's going to get you coming in

03:04more downward into the sand and more with the leading edge rather than the trailing edge of the

03:08bounce so it's going to dig down a bit more and just it's a bit of insurance about that that bounce

03:13happening and that ball going too far the ball position also i just move that back a little bit

03:18and add a little bit more forward lean of the shaft whereas before it was very neutral we're now going

03:23to shift this way a little bit put a bit of that lean in and you'll see the difference in the

03:28follow-through my follow-through for the soft sand you can see it's a full and complete release because

03:34i'm using the trailing edge from this lie here you'll see the difference in the follow-through

03:39so the ball goes back the hands go forward and the follow-through is much shorter and more curtailed

03:44and that means my leading edge is going more down into the sand with the handle leading and that means

03:50i'm not going to get that semi-thin shot which is such a dangerous shot out the sand

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