How To Vary The Distance From A Greenside Bunker Golf Tip (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Vary The Distance From A Greenside Bunker Golf Tip (Video) - by Pete Styles

Now if you are the type of golfer that goes in the bunker, gets the ball out every time and you’re relatively happy with that, maybe this little tip here can help you play better bunker shots by controlling the distance of the bunker shot. So not only are we trying to get the ball out, we are now trying to get it close to the flag. We had a short flag, middle length flag, or a longer flag, or even a fairway bunker when you want to hit out a long way. Now there’s three different ways of controlling your distance when you are in a greenside or a fairway bunker. The first thing is simply changing clubs. Like we would do from the fairway we want to change the distance which can change the club. You don’t have to always go with sand wedge when you are in a bunker. So if you wanted to hit a longer fairway bunker shot it might be a seven or eight irons or something like that. Shorter fairway bunker shot it might be a pitching wedge. Around the green, green site it might be your sand wedge, it might be the natural go to club just because it’s sand on the bottom, that’s the one I’m going to use.

But actually if you wanted a shorter shot and a higher shot, maybe a log wedge would be a good choice. Four or five extra degrees of loft is going to go higher and shorter. If you’ve got a long pitching sort of bunker shot that needs to go to the back of the green maybe your gap wedge is about 50/52 degrees or even your pitching wedge 46/48 degrees. So changing the club can change the distance of the shot. Another thing that can start to change the distance of your bunker shot is how hard you hit it. So similar to how when you go out into the grass and play your normal pitch shots and chip shots, sorry you have longer swings and shorter swings to change the distance, simply do that in the bunker. If the club head is traveling faster as it hits the ball, the ball will go further; if the club head is travelling slower when you hit the ball, the ball will go a bit shorter. And there’s one other technique that some people use when they are playing bunker shots. It’s not something I encourage my clients to do very regularly because I think it’s very difficult to control, it takes a lot of experience to master, but this would be to change the amount of sand that you are going to take, to change the distance of the shot. So like I just said, changing the length of swing and the club head speed will change the distance of the shot. So if you use the sand to change the club head speed that has the same effect. So as I hit down into a ball and take less sand an inch half, an inch something like that the club head will be travelling nice and quick and the ball will therefore go further. Likewise if I hit the same power swing, the same length of swing with the same power but now hit more sand 3, 4, 5 inches of sand the ball is going to come out a lot shorter. So I could use the length of swing I could use the club or I could use the amount of sand all to change the length of my bunker shots. Have a little practice and experiment with that. There’s no right or wrong way, experiment with it. Have a little go with maybe hitting five balls with different techniques and see where the distances work out for you. 2014-03-26

Now if you are the type of golfer that goes in the bunker, gets the ball out every time and you’re relatively happy with that, maybe this little tip here can help you play better bunker shots by controlling the distance of the bunker shot. So not only are we trying to get the ball out, we are now trying to get it close to the flag. We had a short flag, middle length flag, or a longer flag, or even a fairway bunker when you want to hit out a long way. Now there’s three different ways of controlling your distance when you are in a greenside or a fairway bunker. The first thing is simply changing clubs. Like we would do from the fairway we want to change the distance which can change the club. You don’t have to always go with sand wedge when you are in a bunker. So if you wanted to hit a longer fairway bunker shot it might be a seven or eight irons or something like that. Shorter fairway bunker shot it might be a pitching wedge. Around the green, green site it might be your sand wedge, it might be the natural go to club just because it’s sand on the bottom, that’s the one I’m going to use.

But actually if you wanted a shorter shot and a higher shot, maybe a log wedge would be a good choice. Four or five extra degrees of loft is going to go higher and shorter. If you’ve got a long pitching sort of bunker shot that needs to go to the back of the green maybe your gap wedge is about 50/52 degrees or even your pitching wedge 46/48 degrees. So changing the club can change the distance of the shot. Another thing that can start to change the distance of your bunker shot is how hard you hit it. So similar to how when you go out into the grass and play your normal pitch shots and chip shots, sorry you have longer swings and shorter swings to change the distance, simply do that in the bunker. If the club head is traveling faster as it hits the ball, the ball will go further; if the club head is travelling slower when you hit the ball, the ball will go a bit shorter.

And there’s one other technique that some people use when they are playing bunker shots. It’s not something I encourage my clients to do very regularly because I think it’s very difficult to control, it takes a lot of experience to master, but this would be to change the amount of sand that you are going to take, to change the distance of the shot. So like I just said, changing the length of swing and the club head speed will change the distance of the shot. So if you use the sand to change the club head speed that has the same effect. So as I hit down into a ball and take less sand an inch half, an inch something like that the club head will be travelling nice and quick and the ball will therefore go further.

Likewise if I hit the same power swing, the same length of swing with the same power but now hit more sand 3, 4, 5 inches of sand the ball is going to come out a lot shorter. So I could use the length of swing I could use the club or I could use the amount of sand all to change the length of my bunker shots. Have a little practice and experiment with that. There’s no right or wrong way, experiment with it. Have a little go with maybe hitting five balls with different techniques and see where the distances work out for you.