Golf Bunker, Should I Use A Lob Wedge (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Bunker, Should I Use A Lob Wedge (Video) - by Pete Styles

So a lob wedge that I’m just hitting from the bunker here, I’m trying to splash down on this golf ball really hard, get the ball to come out as high and as quickly as possible, and get the ball to stop on the green as quickly as possible. Quite happy with that shot it should give me a good chance to walk up there and hopefully roll a putt in. But most of the shots I would hit from the green side bunker like this are going to be played with my sand wedge.

So why would I make a decision here to play with my lob wedge. Well really I’m weighing up a couple of facts. I’m weighing up the leading edge of the bunker here is quite tall. I want to get the ball out and up quickly so I choose my most lofted club. I’m playing to a flag that isn’t very far away, I want to get the ball up over this leap, get the ball to stop fairly quickly, so I use my most lofty club. I’ve also got a little bit of the breeze behind me blowing these flags away from me, so downwind shot, so I don’t want the ball to land on the green and race off on the breeze. So again I use my most lofted club. Now one of the down sides of using a lob wedge is kind of what we’ve just seen there it goes up and it stops very quickly. So sometimes if you’ve got a lot of bunker to clear, the lob wedge would be the wrong choice of shot because it won’t go far enough. The other down side of using a lob wedge is sometimes it doesn’t have enough bounce on the bottom of the club. So bounce is the amount of degrees, the trailing edge is below the leading edge and generally speaking your sand wedge will be designed with a lot more bounce, maybe 10, 12, 14 degrees of bounce on a sand wedge which is great, because bounce is like an insurance policy. When something goes wrong we want the club to bounce out of the sand and not dig in. So if you hit too heavy, too much ground, too much sand we don’t want that club to dig down. So the insurance policy of having bounce on there helps you out when something goes wrong. Having a lob wedge with less bounce, you do risk a little bit. So if you hit down too early too heavy, sometimes you’ll see the club head dig in a bit too deeply and slow down a bit too much. So when you’re playing these bunker shots with your lob wedge, we want to open the face to create loads of loft and loads of bounce. We want to hit in nice and aggressively, nice and firmly. You don’t need to sledge hammer this golf ball out from this five yard shot, but a nice assertive follow through. Be nice and positive on the follow through and that should be able to pop the ball out nice and high plenty of height, plenty of spin. And that’s how and when you should use your lob wedge to play out in bunkers. 2014-11-12

So a lob wedge that I’m just hitting from the bunker here, I’m trying to splash down on this golf ball really hard, get the ball to come out as high and as quickly as possible, and get the ball to stop on the green as quickly as possible. Quite happy with that shot it should give me a good chance to walk up there and hopefully roll a putt in. But most of the shots I would hit from the green side bunker like this are going to be played with my sand wedge.

So why would I make a decision here to play with my lob wedge. Well really I’m weighing up a couple of facts. I’m weighing up the leading edge of the bunker here is quite tall. I want to get the ball out and up quickly so I choose my most lofted club. I’m playing to a flag that isn’t very far away, I want to get the ball up over this leap, get the ball to stop fairly quickly, so I use my most lofty club. I’ve also got a little bit of the breeze behind me blowing these flags away from me, so downwind shot, so I don’t want the ball to land on the green and race off on the breeze.

So again I use my most lofted club. Now one of the down sides of using a lob wedge is kind of what we’ve just seen there it goes up and it stops very quickly. So sometimes if you’ve got a lot of bunker to clear, the lob wedge would be the wrong choice of shot because it won’t go far enough. The other down side of using a lob wedge is sometimes it doesn’t have enough bounce on the bottom of the club.

So bounce is the amount of degrees, the trailing edge is below the leading edge and generally speaking your sand wedge will be designed with a lot more bounce, maybe 10, 12, 14 degrees of bounce on a sand wedge which is great, because bounce is like an insurance policy. When something goes wrong we want the club to bounce out of the sand and not dig in. So if you hit too heavy, too much ground, too much sand we don’t want that club to dig down.

So the insurance policy of having bounce on there helps you out when something goes wrong. Having a lob wedge with less bounce, you do risk a little bit. So if you hit down too early too heavy, sometimes you’ll see the club head dig in a bit too deeply and slow down a bit too much.

So when you’re playing these bunker shots with your lob wedge, we want to open the face to create loads of loft and loads of bounce. We want to hit in nice and aggressively, nice and firmly. You don’t need to sledge hammer this golf ball out from this five yard shot, but a nice assertive follow through. Be nice and positive on the follow through and that should be able to pop the ball out nice and high plenty of height, plenty of spin. And that’s how and when you should use your lob wedge to play out in bunkers.