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If a player has hit their ball into the bunker there is no guarantee they will be left with a good lie.

Golfers could find they are faced with a great, good, indifferent, bad or downright terrible lie and need to understand how the differences will affect the resulting shot.

Good lies enable players to fan a lofted club open and use the bounce to help slide underneath the ball, lifting it out on a fine layer of sand. Bad lies, however, need more sand to be taken.

• The different shots needed for these lies can be classed as splash and blast bunker shots. The splash shot is used when the lie is good and the blast shot for when the lie is bad.
• From a good lie, when the ball is sat on top of the sand, golfers can open up the club face and then the stance to add the maximum amount of loft possible. From this set up, the club can be swung along the toe line entering the sand an inch behind the ball and taking a fine layer of sand. This will cause the ball to fly high, loaded with spin, and stop quickly on the green. The size of the divot should only be the size of a $1 bill and shallow.

From a bad lie, when the ball is sat down in the sand, players need to keep the club face and stance relatively square to the target, possibly open by a degree or two. Because the lie is bad, the club, normally a sand wedge, needs to enter the sand a few inches behind the ball and go deeper. This will cause the ball to be catapulted out lower and with less back spin. This means the ball will roll out a greater distance and not stop as quickly as the splash technique. The divot created by the blast bunker shot will be long and deep.

When players find themselves in a bunker they should carefully assess the lie and try to predict how it will affect the technique and resulting shot.

The sand acts as a barrier between the club face and ball. On a normal shot from the fairway, you have maximum control over the ball flight because the club face interacts with the ball directly. On a bunker shot, the greater the amount of sand that comes between the ball and club face, the less control a player has over the ball.

High lofted wedges have ‘bounce angle built into the sole. Bounce angle is the difference in height between the leading edge and back edge of the sole. The back edge is always lower to help guide the club back up through the sand. When a player opens up the club it increases the amount of bounce, precisely the opposite of what is needed if the lie is poor. On poor lies, golfers need to get deeper into the sand to lift the ball out.

Like in all other areas of the game, downhill and uphill lies will affect the balls trajectory. If the ball lies on a down slope in the bunker, its trajectory will be lower because the clubs loft will decrease. If the ball lies on an upslope, the trajectory will be higher because of the increase in loft.