Why Should You Use A Golf Sand Wedge In The Green Side Bunker (Video) - by Pete Styles
Why Should You Use A Golf Sand Wedge In The Green Side Bunker (Video) - by Pete Styles

This is almost a rhetorical question, but why should you use a Sand Wedge in a green side bunker? A lot of golfers just say, well it’s got sand on the bottom of it, and then sand so it would stand to reason that this is where we would use it. But actually there is a little bit more science behind this and if you understand the science, you will understand why a Sand Wedge is how it is and the times you should or shouldn’t play it.

So Sand Wedge is your shortest club, so generally used for quite short shots, give you a bit more control if you can get near the ball you don’t need to much distance that’s why your Wedge is quite short, it’s also one of your heaviest clubs so that when the club hits into the sand it drives through the sand nicely. It’s also one of your most lofted golf clubs, probably 55 or 56 degrees on most Sand Wedges but anything between 54, 58 would be okay for your standard Sand Wedge. So very lofted and designs of the ball will pop out of a bunker generally bunkers are holes in the ground, lips in the front, we’ve got to try and get the ball to pop up quite quickly, so we use quite a lofted club. We also have a Sand Wedge that’s got plenty of bounce on the bottom; now this is a terminology that a lot of people don’t quite understand. Bounce is the fact that the bottom edge of the golf club here at the back is ahead of the leading edge; effectively the sole of the golf club is like this, the loft on the face like this. But the sole at the bottom sticks downwards and that almost works like a fin that as I hit into the bunker, the bounce on the sole tries to stop the club from digging in. Now the bounce is probably the most important aspect of a Sand Wedge, it works like an insurance policy for you. And then if you hit the ball perfectly, you don’t really need the bounce, but if you hit slightly heavy and you hit the ground slightly before the ball, that bounce is really going to work quite nicely for you and that it won’t dig in. Now if you took all the bounce of your Sand Wedge, you would find this club just wants to propel itself from a straight downwards, very deep, very aggressive divots. Now I was able to manipulate the bounce of by leaning the handle force and hitting down that cuts out the bounce angle. If I now hit a bunk shot practice swing with lots of bounce slightly open phase, and use the bounce correctly you see that club doesn’t dig in anywhere near as much, it doesn’t slow the club down, it’s a lot more relaxed and gentler way of playing the shot. So the bounce angle combined with the loft, the weight and the short nature of the shaft, is really the reason why we use the Sand Wedge when we are in a bunker. 2014-01-16

This is almost a rhetorical question, but why should you use a Sand Wedge in a green side bunker? A lot of golfers just say, well it’s got sand on the bottom of it, and then sand so it would stand to reason that this is where we would use it. But actually there is a little bit more science behind this and if you understand the science, you will understand why a Sand Wedge is how it is and the times you should or shouldn’t play it.

So Sand Wedge is your shortest club, so generally used for quite short shots, give you a bit more control if you can get near the ball you don’t need to much distance that’s why your Wedge is quite short, it’s also one of your heaviest clubs so that when the club hits into the sand it drives through the sand nicely. It’s also one of your most lofted golf clubs, probably 55 or 56 degrees on most Sand Wedges but anything between 54, 58 would be okay for your standard Sand Wedge.

So very lofted and designs of the ball will pop out of a bunker generally bunkers are holes in the ground, lips in the front, we’ve got to try and get the ball to pop up quite quickly, so we use quite a lofted club. We also have a Sand Wedge that’s got plenty of bounce on the bottom; now this is a terminology that a lot of people don’t quite understand. Bounce is the fact that the bottom edge of the golf club here at the back is ahead of the leading edge; effectively the sole of the golf club is like this, the loft on the face like this. But the sole at the bottom sticks downwards and that almost works like a fin that as I hit into the bunker, the bounce on the sole tries to stop the club from digging in.

Now the bounce is probably the most important aspect of a Sand Wedge, it works like an insurance policy for you. And then if you hit the ball perfectly, you don’t really need the bounce, but if you hit slightly heavy and you hit the ground slightly before the ball, that bounce is really going to work quite nicely for you and that it won’t dig in. Now if you took all the bounce of your Sand Wedge, you would find this club just wants to propel itself from a straight downwards, very deep, very aggressive divots.

Now I was able to manipulate the bounce of by leaning the handle force and hitting down that cuts out the bounce angle. If I now hit a bunk shot practice swing with lots of bounce slightly open phase, and use the bounce correctly you see that club doesn’t dig in anywhere near as much, it doesn’t slow the club down, it’s a lot more relaxed and gentler way of playing the shot. So the bounce angle combined with the loft, the weight and the short nature of the shaft, is really the reason why we use the Sand Wedge when we are in a bunker.