Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro
If you are out on the golf course and you find yourself in a position where you’ve got a long greenside bunker short so we are talking between 20 and 40 yards here it’s really easy to get caught in two minds of how to play the shots. So first of all decide to be very definite with how you are going to play the short, how are you going to approach it as though it’s a splash short from close to the green and you are going to play it harder or are you going to take the ball cleanly and play it more like a pitch? My advice to you would be to disregard the splash shots and having to swing hard, always when it comes to touching shots into the green try and play these shots with a slightly softer swing so if the ball comes out softer and is going to land a lot more softly on the green you’ll have more control. So disregard the splash short and play it as though it’s a slightly longer short up pitch. Use your pitching wedge or your 9-iron rather than your Sand Iron, so here I’m hitting my pitching wedge. I’d set up in the bunker so you are going to take the ball cleanly, so again you don’t want to be caught between two minds so I take it clean or do I hit the sand? If you are going to play this longer short take the ball cleanly without striking the sand first.
So let’s start up in a way that that’s going to help us to take the ball cleanly, play the ball in the center of your stance and rather than wriggling your feet in just stand on top of the surface, we don’t club head to strike the sand and go under the ball here as such we want to strike the ball cleanly. So rather than wriggling the feet in as you normally would get your feet stable get you balance but don’t wriggle the feet in. The second tip I would give you is hold slightly lower down on the handle than usual, the reason for doing this again is to shorten the distance between the club head and your body. So the shorter the distance is the more you are going to take the ball cleanly off the top. So you don’t want to hold right at the full extent of the handle and strike the sand first so hold slightly down on the handle, have the ball in the center of the feet and then just lean slightly on the left. Keep the hands forward so the ball, the hand should left to the ball as you are looking at it, and then work on making a swing where you hold your posture, keep your chin up, keep the same flex in the like rather than letting them drop keep the chin up so the head doesn’t drop down any downward movement you are going to strike the sand first. So we’ve got ball in the middle, weight on the left, hands forward we are going work on making a swing where we keep the posture nice and cool, we keep the chin up and you should strike the ball very cleanly. So you won’t hear any sound at all you’ll hear a nice click on the ball. Depending on how far you need to hit the ball that’s going to dictate how far back to swing but I would to work on how then no more than say shoulder high with the hands you don’t need to put a full swing on this. So we are going to swing back just a shoulder high and nice and easily through, you should take the ball nice and cleanly and you find that you hit the green every time. 2014-01-13 Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro
If you are out on the golf course and you find yourself in a position where you’ve got a long greenside bunker short so we are talking between 20 and 40 yards here it’s really easy to get caught in two minds of how to play the shots. So first of all decide to be very definite with how you are going to play the short, how are you going to approach it as though it’s a splash short from close to the green and you are going to play it harder or are you going to take the ball cleanly and play it more like a pitch? My advice to you would be to disregard the splash shots and having to swing hard, always when it comes to touching shots into the green try and play these shots with a slightly softer swing so if the ball comes out softer and is going to land a lot more softly on the green you’ll have more control. So disregard the splash short and play it as though it’s a slightly longer short up pitch. Use your pitching wedge or your 9-iron rather than your Sand Iron, so here I’m hitting my pitching wedge. I’d set up in the bunker so you are going to take the ball cleanly, so again you don’t want to be caught between two minds so I take it clean or do I hit the sand? If you are going to play this longer short take the ball cleanly without striking the sand first.
So let’s start up in a way that that’s going to help us to take the ball cleanly, play the ball in the center of your stance and rather than wriggling your feet in just stand on top of the surface, we don’t club head to strike the sand and go under the ball here as such we want to strike the ball cleanly. So rather than wriggling the feet in as you normally would get your feet stable get you balance but don’t wriggle the feet in. The second tip I would give you is hold slightly lower down on the handle than usual, the reason for doing this again is to shorten the distance between the club head and your body. So the shorter the distance is the more you are going to take the ball cleanly off the top. So you don’t want to hold right at the full extent of the handle and strike the sand first so hold slightly down on the handle, have the ball in the center of the feet and then just lean slightly on the left. Keep the hands forward so the ball, the hand should left to the ball as you are looking at it, and then work on making a swing where you hold your posture, keep your chin up, keep the same flex in the like rather than letting them drop keep the chin up so the head doesn’t drop down any downward movement you are going to strike the sand first.
So we’ve got ball in the middle, weight on the left, hands forward we are going work on making a swing where we keep the posture nice and cool, we keep the chin up and you should strike the ball very cleanly. So you won’t hear any sound at all you’ll hear a nice click on the ball. Depending on how far you need to hit the ball that’s going to dictate how far back to swing but I would to work on how then no more than say shoulder high with the hands you don’t need to put a full swing on this. So we are going to swing back just a shoulder high and nice and easily through, you should take the ball nice and cleanly and you find that you hit the green every time.
