EASY WAY TO PLAY BUNKER SHOTS

Full Transcript 

Hey everybody Danny Maude here this week we're going to discuss bunkers have you ever found that getting out of a bunker can be really difficult at times how often are you finding yourself leaving yourself in the bank taking two or three to get out or if you do get out you're flying over the back of the green wall this is the case for a lot of members here at Canterbury and I bring you here to the 15th because this is a bunker that is a nemesis for a lot of our members it's a very very steep Bank in front of us so we need the ball coming up really quickly and we also need the boss stopping we don't want it to go too far when it actually does get out so I'm going to show you how to play bunker shots in the easiest way possible what we're going to do is we're going to discuss a very unique grip that you have four bunkers only I'm going to go through the setup exact setup but you're gonna need to do this and obviously the technique to help this work really really well so let's get started so the very first thing we need to focus on is the actual setup itself so very different and to what a lot of people have been taught in the past the me included right so in the old days we were taught to aim open our face of the golf up here and aim left of target okay and that would get a swing path that would swing very much across the ball we don't want that now right we've we've come we've developed we've come along and what we want to do now is you want to stand much much Square to the ball right so what I'm going to show you in a second is I want to show you exactly how we set up to the golf ball so let's start by looking at how we hold the golf club because it's a very unique grip compared to the way we'd hold a driver or an iron now first of all the way we'd hold a driver or nine we'd have the pupfish square wouldn't wait right and we'd have the left hand fairly neutral neutral being I can see a I can see a couple knuckles here as opposed to lots and the V form between my thumb and my forefinger it's pointed towards my right shoulder but watch this we're now going to change that considerably we're going to open the face about 45 degrees 30 to 45 degrees the left hand as a poster you barely see them the FootJoy logo on my grip I'm going to slide that round and the right round here now now you can see a hell of a lot of that foot roll logo my right hand is going to do the exact I'm gonna move around here compared to what it would normally be would be here we're gonna move it around here now I borrowed this from Pete Cowan who calls this the butterfly grip because basically what you're doing is from a neutral position here you're moving it much much more like this right so you move it round now why do we do that because what it helps to do it helps to keep the loft on the golf grip through impact so we get up lovely elevation and it helps to keep the bounce going through the impact area here so that we don't take too much sand and we can pop that ball nicely up in the area now you got to bear in mind this field field vote because it's very different it'll feel very strange and you'll want to shuffle your hands around it won't feel comfortable and you'll want to change it really go with it and persist with it because it's very very very very good now what we'll do is let's look at exactly now how we set our station up in terms of alignment so here's how I'd like to set up your station if you have a look at the top there's a top line that line is your target line that line points directly towards the flag and just down here you'll see my a parallel line which is parallel left which is your foot line okay these need to be set up before obviously you can't do this actually on the golf course but this is how I'd like to practice right the ball position is opposite your left heel exactly as you'd like as you head driver and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn my left toe out about 45 degrees and put my knee towards in line with that left toe and that just positions my weight on my left side but it also gives me room to to come through the shot so this is this setup position that I'd like you to have every time now watch this the face at this stage here is open alright but what we're going to do is this is important but watch what happens to my shaft I want the shaft to be pointing towards here my belly button right so what I'm doing is notice a shaft here it's not parallel or in line with the ball here I get in the hands head we do not want now what we want to have is a shaft in line with our belly button here so you can see here slightly off-center to the parallel lines it's very very important it's going to help the bounce work far more efficiently through the impact area

right so when we go now is like we've taken our stance we've got a nice parallel lines drawn out here we put the bulbs in line with our left heel and now what we're going to do we're going to point our left toe out I'm going to point our knee in line with the left toe why we're doing that just two things pushes our weight forward and provides also room now to come through the shot we've taken our grip we've opened the stance we put their unique butterfly grip on which we've got from peak our left hand round right hand round okay now from this position here the shaft at this stage is what leaning too much this way so we need to make one final alteration we need to move the shaft angle now point it towards our Bella blood this does two things it squares off the face a little bit more and the other thing it does is it allows the bounce to glide through the sand here right this way compared to the shaft leaning we get the leading edge coming in and we start to dig into the sand we do not want that too much dig pushes too much sand over the top of the ball either it'll do two things you won't get a height to get the ball out of a steep bunk like this or when it does get matched this is going to come out with so much topspin you're going to lose complete control of the golf ball so there's the setup so parallel stance toe pointing outwards knee pointing along with toe board position opposite left heel butterfly grip point but towards tummy right that's the setup let's have a look at this in action

now we've got a nice shallow divot balls popped up let me show you now exactly how we play that technique so that you can do that every single time so now let's look at the technique that's required to kind of create and maximize that new set up position so what we want to do is is this is what tends to happen with a lot of golfers who are struggling to get out the bunker they do a couple of things when they swing back they generally swing a little bit too far around here all right as opposed to swing up there so I want to get a much more height on what you're doing here we need to get the height working so we can start to use the bounce the other thing here is I see with a lot of golfers they're often from this position they're often too much dragging their butt of the end down forcing a flick let me show you what I mean by that so when they swing back here what they're doing is they they basically bring the butt down here right and then from this position they get stuck and they're having to flick it what we want to do instead is this we want to practice bringing the club down and then work in the club back down on a mini arc back to the golf ball so notice this from here I'm not dragging it down I'm just practicing a mini AK back to the golf ball I'm sure this looks like from this angle so when I'm swinging back we don't bring the hands here and leave the club behind watch this I'm bringing their hands back to where they started right but I'm bringing the club head around on a mini AK and what that does is it brings the club back down and it helps you to use the bounce far more effectively so let's have a look at this so as I swing back here I'm going to bring the club down I'm going to bring the club around on this mini AK back in front of my body here lovely okay now one other thing to watch out for here is this a lot of movements often in bunkers right we do want to do not want that when you start to swing the club back look at my body here as it's coming back into impact its remaining stable and I'm bringing the club back in front of me here I'm not swaying around this causes a reaction lots of flick shots lots of fat shots right we want the club swinging back bringing back in front of this the sternum here on this mini ACK let's have a look at this again just finally as we swing back here we'll bring the club back down and we're gonna try and bruise the sand with the bounce here and that's how you get that lovely height on the shot landing very very very softly so let's summarize the bunker itself is very different to eight the way of teaching now is very different we teach it just a few years ago we do not want to be aiming left of target we didn't want to be aiming a cutting across the ball we set up two parallel lines one here for the target line one for the foot line we position the ball opposite the left heel and we turn our out on the left foot and then we position our knee and push our knee to in line with that left toe then finally once you've done this position we're gonna then move the butt here pointing towards the center why was that because we want the bounce gliding and brushing and bruising the sound if the hands are forward the leading edge will dig into the sand and take too much sand right now from here we just simply try to return back to this position so watch this as I swing back here I don't want to react I don't want to go at it I'm gonna hold my frame I'm going to move the club back on this mini ACK back into the body here where the butts returning back to here the and then we simply just continue through the shorten as you can see a very very light dusting of sand and the ball popping up very very simple but it will take some practice particularly with that new butterfly go it feels the ball quite weird to start off with so I hope you really enjoyed this training if you do and you know somebody else who's would really benefit from some bunker training please share it and of course if you're enjoying the content don't forget to subscribe to the channel and press the bell and if you've got any questions put them in the comments box below or head over on to my Instagram channel and ask them there but until next week have a great golfing week