Instruction
Learn to hit bunker shots like the pros
One of the most difficult shots for amateur golfers to understand is the greenside bunker shot, yet when you watch professionals, they take dead aim and are looking to hole the shot from any reasonable lie.
I have used some pictures of one of my professional students whose bunker game is a strength. Here are a few keys to being able to play this shot successful.
Setup
One of the biggest keys to playing this shot successfully is a fundamentally sound setup. As you will see, the lower body will stay fairly quiet throughout a greenside bunker shot, so getting a stable setup is key.
As we can see here, our player is setup with his a wide stance and his knees flexed. He has his weight set into his front knee (red circle). Even though he has a lot of pressure on his front side, he has maintained a fairly neutral spine angle (green line). A lot of amateurs I see will usually have a narrow stance with their weight distributed evenly throughout their feet or even on their back foot. This causes our angle of attack to be to shallow, which leads to heavy and bladed shots.
The Swing
One of the critical aspects of this shot now is that as we make our swing, the club will go back by hinging our wrists up and turning our shoulders. The lower body stays very quiet and maintains the knee flex that was established in the setup.
Impact
The moment of truth for the greenside bunker shot (and any shot) and the moment where most amateurs lose control of the shot. The key to the shot again is a lower body that is stable and an upper body that rotates past the lower body. In this picture, the player’s upper body has already passed the lower body. He achieved this by turning his torso towards the target while making his best effort to maintain his lower body setup position.
Finish
The finish shows that the golfer has rotated his upper body to a full finish. His chest is pointing well left of the target while his lower body is pointing at the target or just slightly right of the target. He also still has flex in his lead knee, which shows once again how stable his lower body is throughout the shot. By achieving this finish, he was able to deliver the club to the ball with plenty of speed to get the ball elevated and out of the bunker with plenty of spin.
The greenside bunker shot is a very difficult shot to perform, but if you can take these keys to help add speed to your swing then you will see that this shot is manageable and from the right situation, makeable.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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nikkyd
Oct 21, 2014 at 4:49 pm
Thats my problem, im hardly ever in the sand,so i spend a lot less time in it. but when it happens, i totally forget everything about how to perform the shot. I get intimidated by the full follow through especially. May i add that practicing bunker shots at my course is hard to do because its more like class 5 gravel
Ponjo
Oct 21, 2014 at 4:10 pm
Hey Scott. Would it be the same in Pot bunkers UK Links style where the faces are sometimes shoulder high as opposed to the ones in your pics. regards
Scott Hogan
Oct 22, 2014 at 4:17 pm
What I would adjust for a pot bunker (assuming you have a good stance and lie, you just need to get over the wall), I would take the same ideas, but make sure the face is well open and then even open it more in the backswing. You will need speed to get the ball to travel high enough and out of the bunker so make sure to turn that chest.
As far as the other comments about skulling the ball, most times I see someone skulling the ball out of the bunker, I will see a set up where their weight is back and their right shoulder is too low (both make a shallow angle of attack) and from this position it is tough to really turn the chest through and get back to the ball before hitting sand so they overcompensate by missing the sand and getting all ball.
JW
Oct 21, 2014 at 12:31 am
Whats up with the sleeves? Compression?
Scott Hogan
Oct 21, 2014 at 1:28 pm
They are sunsleeves to help keep you cool and protect you from the sun in the summer.
gdb99
Oct 20, 2014 at 6:10 pm
Thanks. I will be trying this out in our practice bunker this week. I like the simplicity in your description of the bunker shot.
I’m a 3.7 handicap now, and I am having lots of trouble with my bunker play. Scull them every time…
Will
Oct 20, 2014 at 7:44 pm
3.7 and you skull them everytime???
Philip
Oct 20, 2014 at 11:04 pm
Well you don’t have to put the ball in the sand traps. I can go many rounds before I need to concern myself with the sand. I often hit the first one fat, leaving the ball in the trap. Then step up and put the next one by the hole for a one putt – and why, I’ve bladed a few and I’m hardly in the traps – so I don’t practice much and have gotten timid for the first shot.
Winmac80
Oct 20, 2014 at 11:25 pm
Watch out Bubba!
Gdb99
Oct 21, 2014 at 6:21 am
Yes.