How can I get distance from a fairway bunker? Now when you’re playing out of a fairway bunker, it can be one of the most difficult shots you face in golf but to achieve the maximum amount of distance the first thing you need to ensure is a clean strike on the ball. If you catch behind the ball even slightly and the sand gets caught in between the ball club face it will dramatically reduce the amount of distance that you can achieve, so a clean contact is absolutely essential. Now to ensure that clean contact, what you want to make sure is that the club obviously contacts the ball first and misses the sand. Now to make this more possible I’d grip down the club slightly so leaving a little bit of room on top of the grip, this shortens the overall length of the club and it should stop you digging down into the sand, What I’ll also do with a 7-iron shot normally just forward of centering my stance, I’ll keep the same ball position, but then I’ll just pop a little bit more weight on my front foot, again this should then clear – this should help kind of increase the chances of getting that clean strike.

So I’ll grip down the grip slightly, ball position is pretty similar but my weight is slightly forward and what I’ll try and do is just try and nip it off the surface and not catch the bun – not catch the sand before the ball. So nice and clean off the surface. Now what will reduce the amount of distance you achieve out of a bunker is first of all not picking a club with sufficient loft. There is no point trying to hit a green which is a 180 yards away if you’ve got a very big leap in front of the ball. Pick a club which will get the ball out and achieve the maximum distance you can without leaving yourself in the sand. There is no point in hitting a perfect 5-iron if you’re going to hit it straight into a leap. That won’t achieve any distance at all. So pick a correct club then use this technique and advance that ball as far down the fairway or onto the green if you can.