In this video, Dan Grieve, head professional at Woburn Golf Club, explains how to play bunker shots with some simple tips and drills.
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00:00Hi, Dan Grief here, Head Professional at Web & Golf Club and here we're talking about the
00:08greenside bunker shot and the technique in which you need to be able to splash that ball out every
00:12time. So it really all begins with setup. So I like to see golfers standing nice and wide,
00:18really very important to create a nice wide base when you play these shots because the biggest
00:22fault I see is the golfer moves side to side and that creates thin shots and fat shots. So let's
00:27get really wide like a driver and get this left foot turned out around about 45 degrees and what
00:32that allows you to do then is push your left knee over your foot and get this right leg kicking in.
00:37So you'll find the majority of your weight, perhaps up to 80%, is forward on this left side.
00:42Now for this soft sand you can afford to allow your right shoulder to drop back a little bit.
00:47You don't want to get your upper body stacking over your left leg too much this way. So allow the right
00:51shoulder to drop a little bit lower and we'll have the ball position just inside the left heel.
00:57Very important as well to make sure that the shaft line mirrors that so we have the shaft line neutral,
01:03not hands don't go ahead and they don't come back. Really nice and neutral. The face can be slightly
01:09open because I'm standing far further away from the ball, lots of knee flex. Okay, that allows me to
01:15get more into the sand and really feel like I'm rooted and strong down into the sand and then from there
01:21it's about making sure that we keep the loft and bounce on the club going back and then through
01:26the same thing making sure the chest turns. So I'll just hit one here.
01:32You see it splashes nicely there. Now one of the things that allowed me to play that shot really
01:36nicely was the fact I kept the loft and bounce on and here's a really simple drill you can do is put
01:41some sand on the club face and see if you can keep that sand on and see if you can throw it over that
01:46shoulder there over your back shoulder. Now if you do that that means the left wrist is getting cupped
01:50and the loft and bounce is on and equally you can put some sand on the club face and see if you can
01:55throw it over your front shoulder and if you can do that you've got the same thing going on there
02:00where the club face isn't turning over you're holding the loft and bounce on and creating that
02:04nice splash shot. So one of the real skills when you get into a bunker is being able to read the lie
02:08and make relevant adaptions for the lie. Now we don't always get that lovely soft fluffy sand that
02:13we had for the first shot sometimes the bunkers might be have less sand in they might be more
02:18compact and we need to slightly change how we how we approach the shot because if you're going there
02:23with this one-dimensional approach of just using your standard splash shot you'll um you'll have a lie
02:29like this okay and then you will play the shot and there we go off it goes it's thinned you'll do well
02:35to find your ball so there was nothing wrong with my technique there for the standard splash shot
02:40what was wrong was my intelligence i wasn't able to read the lie very well i wasn't able to adapt
02:45how i put the bounce into the sand so when you get a tight lie like this you have to set up slightly
02:50differently so we'll keep the stance the same you can very much get the weight forward on the left side
02:55but the shoulder line will now be more left as well so you get your left shoulder more over your left foot
03:00and that's this is simply going to steepen your angle of attack it's going to get you coming in
03:04more downward into the sand and more with the leading edge rather than the trailing edge of the
03:08bounce so it's going to dig down a bit more and just it's a bit of insurance about that that bounce
03:13happening and that ball going too far the ball position also i just move that back a little bit
03:18and add a little bit more forward lean of the shaft whereas before it was very neutral we're now going
03:23to shift this way a little bit put a bit of that lean in and you'll see the difference in the
03:28follow-through my follow-through for the soft sand you can see it's a full and complete release because
03:34i'm using the trailing edge from this lie here you'll see the difference in the follow-through
03:39so the ball goes back the hands go forward and the follow-through is much shorter and more curtailed
03:44and that means my leading edge is going more down into the sand with the handle leading and that means
03:50i'm not going to get that semi-thin shot which is such a dangerous shot out the sand