How can you best play a hole that has a centre line bunker? Now a center line bunker is exactly as it sounds, it’s a bunker positioned in the middle normally in your tee shot landing area. So you are looking down the Fairway, there’s the centre and right where you want to hit your ball someone’s put a bunker. And it’s quite an awkward thing here because do you take it on and think, “well I never hit the ball straight,” aim straight at it hoping you miss it and guarantee that’s the ball you’ll hit and then straight down the middle of the bunker and think well I was aiming at that anyway so I got what I deserve.

Unless you have a shape, if your shape is to draw the ball or fade the ball you could aim straight at the bunker and knowing that your general fraiche will take it away or aim straight at it and draw it to one side of it. Generally the best way to play a centre line bunker is just to split the Fairway in half, pretend it’s a very narrow Fairway and choose a side and then really commit to that side. So I would stand back here looking at my centre line bunker, if there’s a breeze from left to right I’m going to go with the right hand half. I’m going to step up at the right hand half hit it nice and committed down that line hoping the wind just keeps it out of the bunker.

Likewise if the wind is the opposite direction, I’d use the wind to keep it out the bunker that way. The big killer here is in decision, the big killer is aiming at the bunker then getting scared of it, being indecisive and potentially giving yourself a bad contact on the ball or a bad strike. So its pick a side be quite specific about your target maybe a stripe of the grass, maybe a tree in the background, aim dead straight at that. Commit to it and just imagine that when there is a centre line bunker, just imagine you are picking one side but it’s a very small Fairway to aim at. Hit it with confidence and you’ll get past that bunker most of the time.