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Why Does My Ball Roll A Long Way After Playing A Golf Bunker ShotSometime when you play a bunker shot, the ball comes out fairly low and seems to keep rolling and rolling. This extra roll out can even make keeping the golf ball on the green a difficultly.


On a standard bunker shot, you want the club to enter the sand a couple of inches before the ball, taking a shallow dollar bill sized amount of sand from under the ball. These ideal impact conditions along with the loft of the club make the ball launch high, land soft and sometime even check up on landing.

So what causes the ball to keep rolling rather than land softly and check up? If you play a bunker shot and the club head enters the sand too far behind the ball, you are taking too much sand. By hitting the sand too much before the ball, you are pushing all that sand towards the ball. As there is too much sand between the club and the ball you will struggle to generate spin. To create spin you need friction between the club face and the golf ball, which is impossible to achieve with a big cushion of sand in the way.

If your taking of sand is ideal, then another reason why the ball could be rolling too much on landing is due to the loft on the club face. If there isnt enough loft on the club at impact then the ball will fly lower and roll more. Make sure you are using at least a 56 degree wedge and you set the club face open 20 to 45 degrees.

As a general rule of thumb, the closer you make contact with the sand towards the ball, the more spin you will create, and the more sand you take before the ball, the less spin you will create.

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As a general rule, the closer you hit the sand towards the ball, the more spin you will produce. If your ball is running too much and you arent taking much sand then you must be hitting the ball thin. The thin strike occurs when the club makes contact with the ball with the leading edge of the club. The club should enter the sand a couple of inches before the golf ball.

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If you hit a bunker shot which rolls out too much on landing without taking any sand then you have hit the shot too cleanly and struck the ball extremely low on the club face. When playing a bunker shot, you want the club entering the sand a couple of inches before the ball to remove a dollar bill size of sand from under the ball.

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More loft on the club makes the ball pop up higher and land softer. This higher and softer flight results in less roll upon landing. More roll on landing is due to hitting too much sand before the ball and also having too little loft on the club face at impact.