How Can I Hit Long Golf Greenside Bunker Shots? (Video) - by Natalie Adams
How Can I Hit Long Golf Greenside Bunker Shots? (Video) - by Natalie Adams

How can I hit a long golf greenside bunker shot? Well, hitting a long greenside bunker shot is really important that you strike the ball quite cleanly and that you don’t hit the sand first. If you do hit the sand all the speed in the club head is going to get transferred into the sand rather than into the ball. So the ball won’t travel far enough and it might not escape the bunker. And with a long greenside bunker shot we’re looking for a shot that’s going to go 30 yards or so we do need to connect with the ball and then the sand. So the approach to have for a long green side bunker shot is to play it like a pitch, and to work on hitting the ball first and either taking it cleanly off the top of the sand or striking the ball and then striking the sand. So set up exactly as you would for a pitch shot, play the ball in the middle of your feet and just set your self so that your feet are just under shoulder with the par, that’s going to aid your balance as you swing, because you’re not swinging this club particularly fast it’s not your driver.

Okay now to make sure that we strike the ball first, we need to set up so that the shaft is leaning slightly forward, so we’ve got the hands forward and the club head on the right of the ball. Once you’ve got the shaft leaning forward, we can then create a straight line from the left shoulder, down the left arm and extend that straight down the shaft of the club, so that we’ve got this straight line and this forwardly, and we’re also going to set your head just on the left of the ball; so make sure your nose position is between your hands and the golf ball. That will just set you slightly more onto the left side and what that’s going to allow is that as you swing back you’ll just pick the club head up just a little bit steeper than usual, and that will allow us to have a steeper descent into the ball and because of that steeper decent we’ll then strike the ball and then the sand. If we set too evenly and we set with the hands over the ball we’ll make too much of a rounded back swing and as we swing in we’ll be approaching the ball at a much lower and shallower angle and we’ll tend to strike the sand first. That’s great for splash shots if you’re really close to the green but it’s not going to help you if you are on a long greenside bunker. So my advice to you would be, play as though you are playing a pitch off the fairway, don’t take more sand, don’t swing harder, it’s going to become very difficult to control the distant of the ball. Just play it as though you’re on the fairway and you’re hitting the pitch, and strike the ball first, then the sand, and you should find that you escape the bunker and you hit onto the green and it will make it a lot easier to score from that long greenside position. 2014-05-23

How can I hit a long golf greenside bunker shot? Well, hitting a long greenside bunker shot is really important that you strike the ball quite cleanly and that you don’t hit the sand first. If you do hit the sand all the speed in the club head is going to get transferred into the sand rather than into the ball. So the ball won’t travel far enough and it might not escape the bunker. And with a long greenside bunker shot we’re looking for a shot that’s going to go 30 yards or so we do need to connect with the ball and then the sand. So the approach to have for a long green side bunker shot is to play it like a pitch, and to work on hitting the ball first and either taking it cleanly off the top of the sand or striking the ball and then striking the sand. So set up exactly as you would for a pitch shot, play the ball in the middle of your feet and just set your self so that your feet are just under shoulder with the par, that’s going to aid your balance as you swing, because you’re not swinging this club particularly fast it’s not your driver.

Okay now to make sure that we strike the ball first, we need to set up so that the shaft is leaning slightly forward, so we’ve got the hands forward and the club head on the right of the ball. Once you’ve got the shaft leaning forward, we can then create a straight line from the left shoulder, down the left arm and extend that straight down the shaft of the club, so that we’ve got this straight line and this forwardly, and we’re also going to set your head just on the left of the ball; so make sure your nose position is between your hands and the golf ball. That will just set you slightly more onto the left side and what that’s going to allow is that as you swing back you’ll just pick the club head up just a little bit steeper than usual, and that will allow us to have a steeper descent into the ball and because of that steeper decent we’ll then strike the ball and then the sand. If we set too evenly and we set with the hands over the ball we’ll make too much of a rounded back swing and as we swing in we’ll be approaching the ball at a much lower and shallower angle and we’ll tend to strike the sand first. That’s great for splash shots if you’re really close to the green but it’s not going to help you if you are on a long greenside bunker.

So my advice to you would be, play as though you are playing a pitch off the fairway, don’t take more sand, don’t swing harder, it’s going to become very difficult to control the distant of the ball. Just play it as though you’re on the fairway and you’re hitting the pitch, and strike the ball first, then the sand, and you should find that you escape the bunker and you hit onto the green and it will make it a lot easier to score from that long greenside position.