How Can I Best Play From A Pot Bunker? (Video) - by Pete Styles
How Can I Best Play From A Pot Bunker? (Video) - by Pete Styles

How can you best play your golf ball when you are in a pot bunker? Now for most people being in a pot bunker is more of a mental issue rather than a physical issue. Pot bunkers by nature are very steep-sided bunkers, maybe quite small in shape and you’re quite often near the lip. Now for most golfers they don’t like that combination, they know I’ve been in the bunker the best of time they’ll put a big lip in the front of them and a small space and they really start to panic and not hit the ball particularly well. If you follow these tips it should help you next time you are in a pot bunker.

First thing we need to appreciate is we need as much loft as possible so go ahead and take your most lofted club possible a sand wedge, if you’ve you got a lob wedge let’s use that in this case as well. Then we can actually add some more loft to this shot as well so during the setting up process, we can tilt the club face where it opens up. Now if you are not comfortable with that process, start by holding the club in front of you and see how that club points up vertically, let’s call that 12 o’clock. And now I am going to twist that golf club to the right so it points at about 1 o’clock I am then going to re-grip it. It’s important I twist and grip rather than grip and twist because that will simply close back over again. So I open it to 1 o’clock and hold it then when I bring club down it has the club face pointing well to the right of my target but it also has loads and loads of loft. If that club is pointing to the right I’m going to have to point my body slightly more to the left. I now have my body left, my club right and the ball should come out somewhere down the centre. When I play my shot here I’m going to take quite a long swing because most of the power is going to go upwards, and I need a bit of up and a little bit of forwards as well. So I’ve got a longer swing, I’m going to skim the club right down underneath the back of the ball, just try and slide the golf ball’s legs off, not too much sand, but definitely not thin. I’m aiming for about two inches of sand here. Now I should slide the club nicely under the ball, the ball will pop up quite high and quite short, it won’t go too far. One last thing to be here is be really committed, don’t be trying to lean back and scoop the ball out, just stay nicely down and committed, the more you hit down here the more the ball will pop up. We are thinking about playing this ball out like a flop shot so it’s a very open face, very open feet, nice long swing and slide its legs off. And if we can do that nicely you’ll feel the ball just popping out of the pot bunkers. 2014-05-09

How can you best play your golf ball when you are in a pot bunker? Now for most people being in a pot bunker is more of a mental issue rather than a physical issue. Pot bunkers by nature are very steep-sided bunkers, maybe quite small in shape and you’re quite often near the lip. Now for most golfers they don’t like that combination, they know I’ve been in the bunker the best of time they’ll put a big lip in the front of them and a small space and they really start to panic and not hit the ball particularly well. If you follow these tips it should help you next time you are in a pot bunker.

First thing we need to appreciate is we need as much loft as possible so go ahead and take your most lofted club possible a sand wedge, if you’ve you got a lob wedge let’s use that in this case as well. Then we can actually add some more loft to this shot as well so during the setting up process, we can tilt the club face where it opens up. Now if you are not comfortable with that process, start by holding the club in front of you and see how that club points up vertically, let’s call that 12 o’clock.

And now I am going to twist that golf club to the right so it points at about 1 o’clock I am then going to re-grip it. It’s important I twist and grip rather than grip and twist because that will simply close back over again. So I open it to 1 o’clock and hold it then when I bring club down it has the club face pointing well to the right of my target but it also has loads and loads of loft. If that club is pointing to the right I’m going to have to point my body slightly more to the left. I now have my body left, my club right and the ball should come out somewhere down the centre. When I play my shot here I’m going to take quite a long swing because most of the power is going to go upwards, and I need a bit of up and a little bit of forwards as well.

So I’ve got a longer swing, I’m going to skim the club right down underneath the back of the ball, just try and slide the golf ball’s legs off, not too much sand, but definitely not thin. I’m aiming for about two inches of sand here. Now I should slide the club nicely under the ball, the ball will pop up quite high and quite short, it won’t go too far. One last thing to be here is be really committed, don’t be trying to lean back and scoop the ball out, just stay nicely down and committed, the more you hit down here the more the ball will pop up. We are thinking about playing this ball out like a flop shot so it’s a very open face, very open feet, nice long swing and slide its legs off. And if we can do that nicely you’ll feel the ball just popping out of the pot bunkers.