Hitting a bunker shot fat can be one of the most frustrating shots in a bunker. You make this nice set of this lovely swing, you hit the sand just where you thought you were meant to hit it but the ball never comes out far enough. Then you try and hit it too hard and it blasts straight over the top of the green. So it’s very important when we’re playing bunk shots we do hit exactly the right amount of sand and this exercise here is a really great way of stopping you hitting the ball fat. So what I’ve done is I’ve lined up three golf balls and I’ve just placed a rake. It’s about six to eight inches behind the ball. Now I’m using a wooden rake here so I kind of know the rakes not going to break, it’s not a flimsy plastic rake. My intention is to not hit this but if I was to hit it I don’t want to break the golf club’s rake. So if you don’t have a rake or you’ve only got a plastic, a stick, a piece of wood or maybe even a golf club handle or an umbrella, something like that that you can’t do too much damage to just placed at the back of the golf ball six to eight inches behind.

Now if I set up to my first ball and I lean back and hit it fat, the club would actually bounce off the top of the rake. So as I make my swing, I hit down and I hit into the rake, I’ve got a wasp bothering me as well. So I hit down, I hit the rake that produces a bad shot and clearly I don’t want to stand there and do that all the time.

That wasp just gone straight over and bothered the camera man. So now as I set up, I’m going to swing, I’m going to try and get my body weight more forward. Now if I’m bothered by the rake and I don’t want to hit down but I hit the top of the ball that’s going to be another bad shot as well so we don’t want to do that. So I do want to take my bunker shot, I do want to hit into the sand but I’m going to try and avoid hitting into the back of where this rake is. So as I set up now, I set my body weight getting forward and drive down I can take a nice divot and splash the ball out really nicely but I’m avoiding hitting the rake. So I get my body weight, I drive forward and I hit down and you can see that my divots are coming quite close to the rake and because they’re coming down at the right angle relatively steep I’m not actually making contact with the rake. I’m moving forwards striking down and that’s three really nice bunker shots taking a good even divot just after – sorry just before the golf ball but just after the rake. Any leaning back and scooping I’m going to hit the back of the rake here, I’m going to have myself some bad shots. If you struggle with the fats, that’s great exercise to make sure you get better contact on your bunker shots.