Please read below for some very important bunker tips. Bunker play is one of the parts of the game that tends to give amateur players trouble, so we hope these top techniques will set you on the right path.

• Play from an open stance. We mentioned this point earlier in the article, but we want to touch on it again here. To loft the ball up out of a greenside bunker with ease, one of the best things you can do is play from an open stance. Unless you are dealing with a particularly long explosion shot – in which case, you’ll probably want to square up your stance – setting up with your feet open to the target will help get the ball up in the air without much trouble. When you open your stance, make sure to keep the ball relatively far forward in your stance. Keeping the ball too far back is an easy mistake to make, but that will cause a steep downswing and you won’t get the kind of elevation on the shot that you had in mind. With an open stance and a forward ball position, you should be able to slide your wedge under the ball with ease, time after time.
• Swing across the ball. This is a point which goes along with the previous point. Once you are in an open stance, you want to be sure to swing across the ball from outside-in as you go through the sand. Swinging across the ball, when combined with an open club face, is going to make it easy to achieve the kind of height needed to get out of greenside bunkers. Some golfers have trouble with this tip, since it is the complete opposite of what you try to do on most of your shots played from outside a bunker. To be sure, the technique that you should be using on a greenside bunker shot would not generally be effective on the grass (except in some very specific circumstances). Therefore, you need to build your greenside bunker technique for use specifically on these kinds of shots.
• Let the right hand work. Your right hand is going to play an important role in this shot. As the club swings down into the sand, you will want to use your right hand to create as much speed as possible through the hitting area. This is not usually an effective technique when outside of a bunker, but again, sand shots are their own challenge. You shouldn’t really be comparing the way you swing the club in a greenside bunker to the way you would swing it when outside of the bunker. On the way down, feel free to let the right hand take over the swing as it propels the clubhead down into the sand. Once you get comfortable with this technique, you will see just how effective it can be at getting the ball to pop up out of the trap.

Bunker shots don’t have to be intimidating, but you do need to understand how they differ from the shots you hit off of grass. The three tips listed above are a big step in the right direction as you work on refining your greenside bunker game. If you can just keep those three points in mind as you practice – use an open stance, swing across the ball, and fire your right hand – you’ll be well on your way.