Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Here we are going to look at how to stop leaving your bunker shots in the sand, which is going to cause you a lot of problems when it comes to scoring. If you can get those bunker shots straight out of the sand, on the first go, you are going to find that your score is really low, rather than taking two or three shots, where you feel you are wasting shots and the score is starting to mount up. So initially, let's look at how to set up correctly to hit a bunker shot, here, we are just going to look at how to set up correctly, to hit a splash shot from a greenside bunker. So we are playing off the soft sand, we have got a good line. Okay, the correct way to do this, is we want to open that clubface, take your sand iron, it’s got the most loft on the club and then open the clubface by rotating the handle. So look at the name on the grip or the grip guide and rotate it over to the right, rather than having it centered. Now place your hands onto the club, holding well, and it’s really important you do that way around, because if you hold and then just turn the club with your hands, effectively you have opened the clubface.

Your hands will return back, the clubface won’t be open, so we have turned the handle of the club, then put our hands on. We are going to hold slightly lower down for a little bit more control and we are going to play this shot from the middle of the stance. So place the ball in the middle of the feet, feet, shoulder width apart for good balance. We are going to wriggle into the sand, it’s going to lower you down and encourage you to take the sand, it’s also going to give you a chance to check the texture of the sand and what the conditions are like, but here we are going to just imagine that we are playing from soft sand. And also, it’s going to give us a firm base and balance to swing from.

Okay, as we play the bunker shot, we are going to make sure we hinge the wrist, and that just means work on creating a 90 degree angle between the left arm and the club shaft as instantly as possible away from the ball. That’s going to allow you to get club head height into the shot, okay and this is the position, we want to see to hit the splash shot from. From here, we are going to slide the club, back down, quite a shallow angle, we are not allowing the club head to stay right out in front of us, where we would really chop down.

So this position, where the club head, where it’s behind you at shoulder height and then we are going to slide the club into the sand. So it scoops under the sand with a very thin slither. If you are fine to leave in, the ball in the bunker, one of the reasons for this, could be, you are taking too much sand. If you are taking too much sand, all the speed from the club head is going into the sand and so the ball is just plopping forward. It’s not being hit firm enough to get it out or within a force. And the reason for that would be the club head into this position rather than this position as you swing back. So work on correcting that, that may help you. You may also find that if you are keeping the ball, in the sand, you are not following through correctly. And see, that’s one of the main causes, you are hitting through with enough force, to get the ball out of the sand.

So when you swing the club and you have made that wrist hinge position there, work on striking the sand two inches to the right of the ball, taking a very thin slither under the – of sand, from under the ball to push the sand and in turn push the ball out, but make sure you don’t finish here in a very low finish position. If you are doing that, you are decelerating as you are hitting the ball and again, you are not going to have enough force, so as you hit the sand to get the ball out. So work on hitting and striking the sand and a really high follow through position, encouraging the club head to get the force that it needs, the club head speed through the sand to get the ball out.

Okay, so we have just looked there, at making sure you set up correctly, that you are not swinging too steeply with the club head position and chopping down, taking too much sand or hitting the top of the ball or to make sure that you are following through into a good full high position with the club head and make sure the club head is pointing up above the flag rather than quitting and stopping once you have hit. So this is a really good drill, to help you work on that and then to introduce the ball. I am just going to place some alignment pole here, what you would do if you were in a bunker is take the end of your club, just draw a line into the sand.

So the alignment pole is representing that line, then with the other end of the club, just press the end of the club into the sand, down that alignment pole or down the line we have drawn in the sand, about two inches to the right. We are going to set up, so that we have got the ball quite centered, and then we are going to work on swinging how we have just discussed and work on getting the club head to enter the sand, where the alignment pole is. You should see, you then take the divot from the line and take the dint that you put into represent the ball out. So the divot is going from the line and making that dint disappear, so I would do that working your way down the line, the way we have just talked about swinging. And then once you have done that and you are starting to see that you are getting a more accurate connection on that line, you are ready to put the ball back in. If you notice that you are connecting back here, you are taking too much sand and if you notice that you are just taking the ball and not taking any sand at all, again, that’s going to fire the ball into the face with no height.

So work on that drill, get much more accurate on hitting the line and making the divot go from the line through where the sand was, with a nice thin slither of sand, into a full high position, you will be escaping from the bunker and the sand traps in no time.