Possibly the BEST Bunker Tip EVER! - How to play bunker shots from Hard or Soft Sand
Nov 08, 2021
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Hey everybody Danny Maude here thanks for joining us as you can see we're in bunkers so how often do you find yourself sculling it or thinning it over the back of the green or worse still chunking it and leaving it in front of you in this week's video what i'm going to do is i'm going to show you exactly how you get out of bunkers every time we're going to talk about how do you play compact sand hard sand wet sand how you play soft sand what do you do when the balls may be at the back of the bunker on a down slop or on an up slope how do you play those shots we'll cover it all in this video now before i do look if you're new to the channel it's one of your first videos of mine please consider subscribing just press that little bell button next subscribe button you get notified every time i release a video just like this one plus i always put a free download or practice plan in the description box below so you never have to remember a thing great so i love bunkers and by the end of this video you're going to love them too so let's get started how does the ball go out of the bunker in the first place very simply the club head i've got a 60 degree wedge here with a decent amount of bounce so that's the first thing you want you want i've got 12 degrees of bounce very very important okay the club comes in behind the golf ball about an inch or two here it then arrives hits the base of the uh sand and then pops the ball up in the air like that so notice it never really hits the golf ball because actually when it does pop the ball airborne there's actually a bed of sand between the club and the ball this is one of the reasons why when you hit quite firmly the balls don't go very far right so let's show you how you can do this consistently and accurately the first thing i'm going to do is take your club open the club face wide open here so the back of the club is resting basically on the sand then i want you to grip it this allows you then to get a nice sliver and a bounce or use the bounce in the sand if the club face is completely square what you end up doing look is you get the leading edge coming into the sand here and this creates this deepness now if that deepness comes into the sand what's going to happen is how do you get the bounce you don't the club just keeps going going going going going there's no bounce there's no ricochet the ball just gets fatted into the middle of the into the bunker right so we want to use the bounce the next thing you want is as you want to then we'll go into the rest of setup in a second i want you to get the feeling that no one gets this is the crux to all bunker play you've got to let the momentum of the club work so get a sense of that now i'm holding it in my right hand you could hold it in your lead hand if you if you play golf right handed play but you're actually left handed doesn't matter but i'm letting my elbow fold here and i'm allowing the club face naturally to open and i'm going to get some momentum in this club that's all i'm doing swinging momentum you'll notice here the club is opening and as it comes in look it's starting to close okay so take a look at this we want to create momentum in this club all the way but you want to make sure that you're keeping the loft on all the way now to do that just to imagine this i'm going to put some sand on my club here now as i take the club back here i'm basically maintaining that stand on the club here and just coming through i've still maintained it and it's still on the way through here as well so all you're doing in reality you're trying to keep the loft on that golf club all the way when you create this momentum question is how do you make sure that you enters into the correct point in the sand each and every time so that it does pop that bowl airborne well here's what we've got to do so a great drill for this is to lower your hands that helps to keep the loft on if the hands are too high basically the the you take the loft off it makes it much harder to use the bounce we're going to lower the hands then i want to what i want to do is with the ball still opposite the lead heel draw a line two inches behind the ball that's where you're going to obviously enter the sand okay then just move the ball out of the way with your trail arm keep your bicep nice and connected to your body and just allow the club just to swing with momentum again backwards and forwards and start to see if you can allow it to naturally fall on the line now if it's falling behind the line the chances are you're either leaning back and that's forcing momentum to go backwards maybe you haven't even got your sternum set perpendicular maybe it's set too far behind the ball at start so try and get it so that everything's lined up so that when you do throw this momentum it consistently starts look to hit that line backwards and forwards now when people do this to start off with they're hanging on you might be the same you're trying too hard there's too much tension there tension will get rid of momentum make this bunker shot so much harder to hit use that momentum and allow your body to help guide it right now clearly if i throw my momentum forward i throw my mask forward that's going to hit the line ahead so immediately i've got great feedback from here all i want you to do is then with just one arm yes one arm you'll find it so much even though you might be left-handed playing golf right-handed you just do the opposite with your lead hand start to swing the club backwards and forwards here allowing that momentum to strike the line just behind the ball
and watch this come on oh pretty good right and notice quiet sound not much sand being taken why because the club's coming in i'm allowing it to naturally glide why isn't it thinning if i'm gliding it through well because my body's not behind here i'm not scooping it up i'm allowing this my body to be in position so it actually strikes the sand perfectly correctly now let's start adding the second hand alright so with the second hand in all we're going to do exactly the same same thing here so we're going to look to strike the ground behind the ball but remember this is a hands and arms motion so we want to keep our spine perpendicular weights on our lead foot toes pointing outwards here and all we're going to do is swing back and swing through and trust this momentum gets the ball out we're not gonna drive at it we're just gonna trust the momentum of the club we'll get the ball out absolutely perfectly one mistake golfers make before i jump into this they stare at the ball not the sand focus on the sand not the ball
it's a little bit downhill from here so it probably won't there you go it's a little bit long it doesn't matter maybe i should do it one-handed sounds a little better but you can see here no effort at all the balls pop pumping out absolutely perfectly so how do you play different types of sound hard sounds soft sand you know is there changes in you in the in the technique well subtly yes so let's start with compact sand i've already trampled this down round here okay so it's very very compact now in doing that all we're going to do now is this if we play it normally which we're going to do if we play it normally and use too much of the bounce we could literally hit it off almost like the concrete here and actually blade it so what we do instead is is we keep everything the same bulb position the same all the facets of what we're doing a minute ago but we're going to position just a little bit more weight on our lead side here and we're going to sense that the bounds of the club momentum is thrown a little bit more small steeper into the back of the ball that's basically it okay so literally same swing just pop down there and away we go now that's absolutely fine it's downhill it's going to be absolutely fine i've broken the seal of sand and it pops it up so how what differences down do you make when it's softer sand so let's move in some fluffy stuff here well the softer sand you got a couple of options sometimes what i actually do is i grab myself another wedge and i actually have two wedges where i have one with a wide sole bounce on here so bigger bounce because again we want more bounce working on the soft descent but or if i'm using my existing wedge i'll just lay open even more and i'll make sure that this time when i'm coming in i'm not coming down at all steeply i'm coming in very very shallow okay so same principle here nice and shallow same technique as before
now where we go didn't quite try that one as well as i wanted to but never mind it doesn't matter so but it's out so that's how you play the softer sand now why do you mind just pop out the bunker there very very simply i just caught look at that i've caught too much sand there so what does it mean i've got to use more of that bounce more of the glide through the impact area now if you've got time to play a very difficult shot the one that people absolutely hate now there's no chance i'd think of me stopping this actually on the green here but if i position a ball right at the back of the bunker on a down slope okay how would i play this shot well remember same principles apply we get the spine perpendicular to the slope so how much pressure do you think i'm going to have on my lead side a lot right now all i'm going to do here is this this is ridiculously sleep i'm going to have to come up really steep i'm going to have to get this a club just as before into the sand into the back of that bunker now i have probably got not much chance to stop it on the green in fact it's probably going to go too far i'd normally accomplish probably go out a bit more sideways on here just to try and keep it on but just for illustration i'm literally going to come up here i'm going to come down into that sand here and i'm going to see if i can play this ball out of the bunker in some description
oh that is as good as i'm gonna ever get stay on stay on yes i would take that 100 times out of a hundred i put my spine perpendicular i haven't tried to scoop it that would have hit the bank i've really committed to the shot i've really released all the things in exaggerated work that i've been teaching you all right so let's just really quickly round up and summarize what we've done first things first we keep we open the club face then we grip it we then sense momentum in this club with one hand initially notice as i'm swinging here i've got some momentum then what do we do well we've got to direct that momentum the ball positions forward okay our hands are low okay behind there hands are nice and low and what we do is we draw a line and we try and practice directing this momentum backwards and forwards if we find ourselves not hitting the line the chances are what we're doing is we're moving our bodies around that that's going to shift momentum back or it's going to shift him into the momentum of the club too far forward so our bodies stay nice and centered here keeping our balance points second things if you hang on too tightly because you're worried about where the club's going to go that will affect your mental you start to drive it here it's going to throw momentum all over the place so once you've done that add the second hand in trying to prepare the exact same process remember it's a feel that it's a hands and arms motion not a body drive that you might have with a proper golf swing once you've done that you've got those sensations you're pretty much there make the slight adjustments with hard and soft sand maybe a bit more pressure on that lead side here going to the sand on the um from thermostand maybe get it wait a bit more even on softer sand use that bounce bit more and maybe even go to a slightly more wider soul club lob wedge of sandwich for that softer sand but that is it you're gonna have to coat with some of the nerves with this because clearly this in itself letting go will feel very very strange yeah very strange initially but trust the momentum how effortless is it for me just popping those balls out i'm not going at it with loads of loads of power i'm using the power that comes from the momentum of this golf club i'm not swaying my body around that's how i get consistent i really really hope this helps if it did please give it a thumbs up maybe share it with one of your friends you think could do with some help out of bunkers and of course look i've put a free downloadable practice guide with all these little steps in the description box below so you never have to remember a thing and of course look if you're new to the channel and this was one of your first videos of mine please consider subscribing by pressing that little bell button and the subscribe button so i can see you next week but until next week have a wonderful golfing week
