How do you play a bunker shot over a high lip? (Video) - by Pete Styles
How do you play a bunker shot over a high lip? (Video) - by Pete Styles

Let’s picture a scenario here where we found our ball in the bunker but we’ve got a high leap in front of us. We’re considering taking a normal bunker shot technique but the feeling for the normal bunker shot technique is it’s just not going to hit the ball high enough over that front lip. So how can we hit the ball higher? Well there’s a couple of things you shouldn’t do, you shouldn’t try and lean back and scoop the ball out because that’s probably going to result in a poor contact. What you should do is change your setup slightly.

So to improve the set up to get the ball higher, first thing we’re going to look at is club face. We can get this club face really twisted into quite an open position. Effectively we’re going to have the club face layed back to about two o’clock. If that would 12 o’clock there, one and two o’clock as I set the club down behind the ball at two o’clock it almost looks like I’ve balanced a glass of wine on the club face, it sits so flat to the ground quite scary to look at it sometimes. It does look like it’s going to hit a ball very far forward at all. But I’ve got the face really wide open. I’m then going to position the ball quite a long forward in my stance as well. So it’s open face and the ball a long way forwards in my stance with quite an open stance as well. So my body is aiming left, my club is aiming right, the ball will come out largely down the centre. I’ve opened the club face wide up, I then make a nice swing where I slice the legs off the ball and just chop its legs off, and the ball is going to go straight up in the air. So a nice powerful swing chopping underneath it and the ball pops up nice and aggressively. Now I talk about making a powerful swing there because most of the energy that comes from the club is going to produce vertical height on the shot. So to get the ball to go up and out I need to have the face open and hit it quite hard. If I didn’t hit it hard chances are it would come out high but then stop quite clear and maybe not clear the leap so all of the energy goes upwards. So it’s open the face, open the feet, play the ball forwards and have nice committed swings that will pop the ball up and over those high lipped bunkers. 2015-03-26

Let’s picture a scenario here where we found our ball in the bunker but we’ve got a high leap in front of us. We’re considering taking a normal bunker shot technique but the feeling for the normal bunker shot technique is it’s just not going to hit the ball high enough over that front lip. So how can we hit the ball higher? Well there’s a couple of things you shouldn’t do, you shouldn’t try and lean back and scoop the ball out because that’s probably going to result in a poor contact. What you should do is change your setup slightly.

So to improve the set up to get the ball higher, first thing we’re going to look at is club face. We can get this club face really twisted into quite an open position. Effectively we’re going to have the club face layed back to about two o’clock. If that would 12 o’clock there, one and two o’clock as I set the club down behind the ball at two o’clock it almost looks like I’ve balanced a glass of wine on the club face, it sits so flat to the ground quite scary to look at it sometimes. It does look like it’s going to hit a ball very far forward at all.

But I’ve got the face really wide open. I’m then going to position the ball quite a long forward in my stance as well. So it’s open face and the ball a long way forwards in my stance with quite an open stance as well. So my body is aiming left, my club is aiming right, the ball will come out largely down the centre. I’ve opened the club face wide up, I then make a nice swing where I slice the legs off the ball and just chop its legs off, and the ball is going to go straight up in the air. So a nice powerful swing chopping underneath it and the ball pops up nice and aggressively.

Now I talk about making a powerful swing there because most of the energy that comes from the club is going to produce vertical height on the shot. So to get the ball to go up and out I need to have the face open and hit it quite hard. If I didn’t hit it hard chances are it would come out high but then stop quite clear and maybe not clear the leap so all of the energy goes upwards. So it’s open the face, open the feet, play the ball forwards and have nice committed swings that will pop the ball up and over those high lipped bunkers.