How to Escape the Fried Egg Lie Bunker Shot, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
How to Escape the Fried Egg Lie Bunker Shot, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

The plugged bunker shot or the buried bunker shot or the fried egg as some people might call it, is taking an already difficult shot like a bunker shot and making it even more difficult, but here’s a couple of little helpful hints that might be able to improve the way you can play these shots.

Firstly it’s not a natural given that you should be taking a sand wedge, because a buried bunker shot sits quite low and as we have discussed before a sand wedge has a lot of bounce angle on it. The bounce angle is trying to not let the club dig deep, we actually want the club to dig deep to go underneath the ball to be able to get it up. So it might be actually better to play a lob wedge or a gap wedge or pitching wedge dependent on how far the shot is. If it’s a short buried bunker shot the lob wedge might be the key. Hit down get underneath it. If it’s a longer buried bunker shot, maybe a gap wedge or pitching wedge.

When you tell yourself play the ball just a round about the center quite a wide stance because we are going to need to hit into the ball quite hard, we have a good grip low down on the club and a little bit of shaft lean getting the hand slightly in front of the golf ball, well again reduce the bounce and encourage a steeper swing helps you hit down more underneath the ball. A good sort of shuffling and screwing in of your feet as well will just help you settle a little bit lower underneath the ball so that the bottom of your swing arc will go lower down underneath the ball. Then it’s a little about commitment, committing to hitting down nice and firm, nice and solid underneath the golf ball, now being sort of afraid of the club stopping on you, the club is going to hit low into the sand, you have got to try and keep driving that through as much as possible, we don’t want to pull out of the ball here. We probably won’t be able to make the full pretty follow through as normal because the sand is going to slow the club down too much but you want to hit down and keep that club going as much as possible.

So when we square up to this we know the ball is not going to come out with masses of height, it also won’t come out with masses of backspin, when it lands on the green there is a risk it will release off a little bit so you have to allow for that with firstly where you land the ball and maybe even where you aim the ball. If you are in the bunker there is a tight flag with another bunker up on the other side you don’t want to necessarily go straight at the flag knowing that it will run off, aim for a wide and more forgiving part of the green, play that buried of plugged bunker shot out to the big section of the green let it release to safety, take your medicine and then putt back. And hopefully with those helpful hints you can improve your plugged and buried bunker shots.

 2012-07-16

The plugged bunker shot or the buried bunker shot or the fried egg as some people might call it, is taking an already difficult shot like a bunker shot and making it even more difficult, but here’s a couple of little helpful hints that might be able to improve the way you can play these shots.

Firstly it’s not a natural given that you should be taking a sand wedge, because a buried bunker shot sits quite low and as we have discussed before a sand wedge has a lot of bounce angle on it. The bounce angle is trying to not let the club dig deep, we actually want the club to dig deep to go underneath the ball to be able to get it up. So it might be actually better to play a lob wedge or a gap wedge or pitching wedge dependent on how far the shot is. If it’s a short buried bunker shot the lob wedge might be the key. Hit down get underneath it. If it’s a longer buried bunker shot, maybe a gap wedge or pitching wedge.

When you tell yourself play the ball just a round about the center quite a wide stance because we are going to need to hit into the ball quite hard, we have a good grip low down on the club and a little bit of shaft lean getting the hand slightly in front of the golf ball, well again reduce the bounce and encourage a steeper swing helps you hit down more underneath the ball. A good sort of shuffling and screwing in of your feet as well will just help you settle a little bit lower underneath the ball so that the bottom of your swing arc will go lower down underneath the ball. Then it’s a little about commitment, committing to hitting down nice and firm, nice and solid underneath the golf ball, now being sort of afraid of the club stopping on you, the club is going to hit low into the sand, you have got to try and keep driving that through as much as possible, we don’t want to pull out of the ball here. We probably won’t be able to make the full pretty follow through as normal because the sand is going to slow the club down too much but you want to hit down and keep that club going as much as possible.

So when we square up to this we know the ball is not going to come out with masses of height, it also won’t come out with masses of backspin, when it lands on the green there is a risk it will release off a little bit so you have to allow for that with firstly where you land the ball and maybe even where you aim the ball. If you are in the bunker there is a tight flag with another bunker up on the other side you don’t want to necessarily go straight at the flag knowing that it will run off, aim for a wide and more forgiving part of the green, play that buried of plugged bunker shot out to the big section of the green let it release to safety, take your medicine and then putt back. And hopefully with those helpful hints you can improve your plugged and buried bunker shots.