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 Women's 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
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 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, hands don't go ahead and they don't come back.
01:07Really nice and neutral.
01:08The face can be slightly open because I'm standing further away from the ball, lots
01:13of knee flex, that allows me to get more into the sand and really feel like I'm rooting
01:18strong down into the sand and then from there it's about making sure that we keep the loft
01:23and bounce on the club going back and then through the same thing making sure the chest
01:28turns.
01:29So I'll just hit one here.
01:33You 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 and 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 and equally you can put some sand on the club face and see if you can throw it
01:55over 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
02:04that 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, sometimes
02:15the bunkers might have less sand in, they might be more compact and we need to slightly
02:20change how we approach the shot because if you go in there with this one dimensional
02:24approach of just using your standard splash shot, you'll have a lie like this okay and
02:30then you will play the shot and there we go, off it goes, it's thinned, you'll do well
02:35to find your ball.
02:37So there was nothing wrong with my technique there for the standard splash shot, what was
02:40wrong was my intelligence, I wasn't able to read the lie very well and I wasn't able to
02:44adapt how I put the bounce into the sand.
02:47So when you get a tight lie like this, you have to set up slightly differently, so we'll
02:52keep the stance the same, very much get the weight forward on the left side but the shoulder
02:56line will now be more left as well, so you get your left shoulder more over your left
02:59foot and this is simply going to steepen your angle of attack, it's going to get you coming
03:03in more downward into the sand and more with the leading edge rather than the trailing
03:07edge of the bounce, so it's going to dig down a bit more and just, it's a bit of insurance
03:12about that bounce happening 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, we're now going to shift this way
03:24a little bit, put a bit of that lean in and you'll see 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, from this lie here, you'll see the difference in the follow
03:38through, so the ball goes back, the hands go forward and the follow through is much
03:43shorter and more curtailed and that means my leading edge is going more down into the
03:48sand with the handle leading and that means I'm not going to get that semi-thin shot which
03:52is such a dangerous shot out of the sand.