How do I Play from Pine Straw? (Video) - by Dean Butler
How do I Play from Pine Straw? (Video) - by Dean Butler

So how do I play a golf shot from pine straw? What’s pine straw here you say? Well, pine straw, the US Masters, I’m sure you watch it from Augusta all the pine needles that are beautifully manicured around all the trees.

So how do we play the golf shot? Well, very simply we do two things. We need to concentrate on actually putting the ball back in our stance and we need to widen the stance and make a good firm base. So, why do we need to do this? Well, just imagine all those pine needles, you’re standing on it and it’s all a little bit slippery, that everything is moving a little bit. So, the first thing that we need to do is just going to say, “Right, let’s get our feet in, a bit like a bunker stance, get those feet and wiggle those feet in, lower yourself into the pine needles to get a good firm base. Now, we don’t want to hit the needles behind the ball because what that would do is tend to catch it heavy. In other words, when you catch the ground first and then the ball, so the distance that you’re going to actually hit is going to be decreased quite dramatically. So, get your feet in and what we want to do is move that ball position further back than what you would normally have. So, a seven iron would normally be in the middle of the stance. Let’s put it a little bit further back. And by doing that, we want to put the weight on our left side, 60-40 just like a bunker shot. So hopefully, you’re thinking this is a bunker setup. You’re absolutely right for this condition that we’re going to play out which is the pine straw. Put the ball back, hit the weight on the left hand side. And from that, we’re creating a slight angle. From here, the club is actually going to go now a little up and come down. As it comes down, there’s no chance from that angle as you’re going to see me catching that pine straw behind it. So, we’re going to catch that ball first. What will happen is the ball will fly out low. I’m sure you’ve seen on those pine needles on the Amen Corner in Augusta, most famous hole in the world. And you can see that ball going down nice and low. And of course when it comes out low, it’s got a little bit of top spin of it. So, that is how you set yourself up, okay? Now the incorrect way is to basically set yourself up and put yourself in a position that you would normally be standing on the top in a nice position. And what has happened is as you swing the club back, is that the feet would tend to literally move; and as the feet move, you’re coming and anything can happen. But what you’re not going to do is get that wonderful strike by setting yourself as we’ve just mentioned as if it were a bunker lie. So, it’s as simple as that. It’s not a difficult shot. But remember, when you have the pine straw, think bunker lie, bunker setup, bunker swing. And that’s how you play the shot correctly. 2014-05-13

So how do I play a golf shot from pine straw? What’s pine straw here you say? Well, pine straw, the US Masters, I’m sure you watch it from Augusta all the pine needles that are beautifully manicured around all the trees.

So how do we play the golf shot? Well, very simply we do two things. We need to concentrate on actually putting the ball back in our stance and we need to widen the stance and make a good firm base. So, why do we need to do this? Well, just imagine all those pine needles, you’re standing on it and it’s all a little bit slippery, that everything is moving a little bit. So, the first thing that we need to do is just going to say, “Right, let’s get our feet in, a bit like a bunker stance, get those feet and wiggle those feet in, lower yourself into the pine needles to get a good firm base. Now, we don’t want to hit the needles behind the ball because what that would do is tend to catch it heavy. In other words, when you catch the ground first and then the ball, so the distance that you’re going to actually hit is going to be decreased quite dramatically.

So, get your feet in and what we want to do is move that ball position further back than what you would normally have. So, a seven iron would normally be in the middle of the stance. Let’s put it a little bit further back. And by doing that, we want to put the weight on our left side, 60-40 just like a bunker shot. So hopefully, you’re thinking this is a bunker setup. You’re absolutely right for this condition that we’re going to play out which is the pine straw. Put the ball back, hit the weight on the left hand side. And from that, we’re creating a slight angle. From here, the club is actually going to go now a little up and come down. As it comes down, there’s no chance from that angle as you’re going to see me catching that pine straw behind it. So, we’re going to catch that ball first. What will happen is the ball will fly out low. I’m sure you’ve seen on those pine needles on the Amen Corner in Augusta, most famous hole in the world. And you can see that ball going down nice and low. And of course when it comes out low, it’s got a little bit of top spin of it. So, that is how you set yourself up, okay?

Now the incorrect way is to basically set yourself up and put yourself in a position that you would normally be standing on the top in a nice position. And what has happened is as you swing the club back, is that the feet would tend to literally move; and as the feet move, you’re coming and anything can happen. But what you’re not going to do is get that wonderful strike by setting yourself as we’ve just mentioned as if it were a bunker lie. So, it’s as simple as that. It’s not a difficult shot. But remember, when you have the pine straw, think bunker lie, bunker setup, bunker swing. And that’s how you play the shot correctly.