• 3 weeks ago
In this video, Dan Grieve, head professional at Woburn Golf Club, explains how to play bunker shots with some simple tips and drills.
Transcript
00:00Hi, Dan Grief here, head professional at Women's Golf Club, and here we're talking about the
00:08green side bunker shot and the technique in which you need to be able to splash that ball
00:12out every time.
00:13So it really all begins with setup.
00:16So I like to see golfers standing nice and wide, really very important to create a nice
00:20wide base when you play these shots because the biggest fault I see is a golfer moves
00:24side to side and that creates thin shots and fat shots.
00:27So let's get really wide like a driver and get this left foot turned out around about
00:3145 degrees and what that allows you to do then is push your left knee over your foot
00:36and get this right leg kicking in.
00:38So you'll find that the majority of your weight, perhaps up to 80%, is forward on this left
00:42side.
00:43Now for this soft sand, you can afford to allow your right shoulder to drop back a little
00:46bit.
00:47You don't want to get your upper body stacking over your left leg too much this way.
00:50So allow the right shoulder to drop a little bit lower and we'll have the ball position
00:55just inside the left heel.
00:57Very important as well to make sure that the shaft line mirrors that so we have the shaft
01:02line neutral.
01:03Hands don't go ahead and they don't come back.
01:07Really nice and neutral.
01:08The face can be slightly open.
01:10Because I'm standing further away from the ball, lots of knee flex, that allows me to
01:15get more into the sand and really feel like I'm rooting strong down into the sand.
01:21From there, it's about making sure that we keep the loft and bounce on the club going
01:24back and then through the same thing, making sure the chest turns.
01:29So I'll just hit one here.
01:33We see it splashes nicely there.
01:34Now one of the things that allowed me to play that shot really nicely was the fact I kept
01:38the loft and bounce on.
01:39And here's a really simple drill you can do.
01:41It's put some sand on the club face and see if you can keep that sand on, see if you can
01:45throw it over that shoulder there, over your back shoulder.
01:47Now if you do that, that means the left wrist is getting cupped and the loft and bounce
01:51is on.
01:52And equally, you can put some sand on the club face and see if you can throw it over
01:56your front shoulder.
01:57And if you can do that, you've got the same thing going on there where the club face isn't
02:01turning over, you're holding the loft and bounce on and creating that nice splash shot.
02:05So one of the real skills when you get into a bunker is being able to read the lie and
02:08make relevant adaptions for the lie.
02:10Now we don't always get that lovely, soft, fluffy sand that we had for the first shot.
02:15Sometimes the bunkers might have less sand in, they might be more compact, and we need
02:19to slightly change how we approach the shot.
02:22Because if you go in there with this one-dimensional approach of just using your standard splash
02:26shot, you'll have a lie like this, okay, and then you will play the shot, and there we
02:33go.
02:34Off it goes.
02:35It's thinned.
02:36You'll do well to find your ball.
02:37So there was nothing wrong with my technique there for the standard splash shot.
02:40What was wrong was my intelligence.
02:42I wasn't able to read the lie very well and I wasn't able to adapt how I put the bounce
02:46into the sand.
02:47So when you get a tight lie like this, you have to set up slightly differently.
02:51So we'll keep the stance the same.
02:53You can very much get the weight forward on the left side, but the shoulder line will
02:56now be more left as well.
02:57So you get your left shoulder more over your left foot, and this is simply going to steepen
03:01your angle of attack.
03:02It's going to get you coming in more downward into the sand and more with the leading edge
03:06rather than the trailing edge of the bounce.
03:09So it's going to dig down a bit more and just, it's a bit of insurance about that bounce
03:13happening and that ball going too far.
03:16The ball position also, I just move that back a little bit and add a little bit more forward
03:19lean of the shaft, whereas before it was very neutral.
03:22We're now going to shift this way a little bit, put a bit of that lean in, and you'll
03:27see the difference in the follow through.
03:28My follow through for the soft sand, you can see it's a full and complete release because
03:34I'm using the trailing edge.
03:35From 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
03:44more curtailed, and that means my leading edge is going more down into the sand with
03:48the handle leading, and that means I'm not going to get that semi-thin shot, which is
03:52such a dangerous shot out of the sand.