Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Lesson 4 – Greenside Bunkers
Greenside bunker play is a very unique area of golf as it is the only time where we deliberately try to miss the ball! In order to play a successful bunker shot, you must ensure that your club enters the sand approximately two inches behind the ball with enough energy to push the ball towards the target. Most people learning to play golf struggle with bunker shots because they decelerate into the sand and simply do not give the sand enough energy to carry the ball onto the green.
The positive areas of Stan’s bunker play
Due to the work we have done over the past three lessons, Stan’s set-up and alignment are really starting to become consistent. This means that before Stan has even started his swing, his body is in the correct position to carry out the technique properly. Naturally, this means that he is giving himself the best chance to hit a good shot.
Areas for improvement
Stan consistently made two errors that made it impossible for him to get the ball out of the bunker with any control. Firstly, as you can see from Picture 1, Stan was not following through with any purpose and his club was stopping just after impact. The technique he was using was reasonably good but he was literally just thumping the club into the sand without enough energy to launch the ball towards the target. Therefore, the first change we made was to get Stan to complete a full follow through which encouraged better acceleration through the ball (see Picture 2) resulting in the ball coming out of the bunker more often.
The second area that was causing Stan some problems was his inability to precisely contact the sand two inches behind the ball. As mentioned in last week’s article, human instinct encourages us to lean back in an effort to get the ball up into the air. Unfortunately, all that achieves when playing a bunker shot is to make it impossible to control where the club enters the sand. In order to rectify this, we completed a couple of drills that helped Stan keep his weight on his left side throughout the swing and at impact. This made it far easier for him to control where his club made contact with the sand.
Evaluation
Greenside bunker shots are very counter intuitive. Firstly, in order to move the ball a short distance you must use a fairly long swing with lots of energy. Furthermore, you are actually trying to deliberately miss the ball. When Stan managed to apply the changes that we discussed, his good set up and decent technique allowed him to hit some very good shots. However, one comment he made was that the changes I asked him to make felt very ‘uncomfortable’. At this point, I responded with my favourite golfing quote: “If it feels comfortable, you’re probably doing it wrong!”
Stan’s verdict: I have a close affinity with bunkers as whenever I strike a golf ball towards the flag it inevitably lands in one. I reckon it’s probably my best shot because it’s the only one in golf where you are NOT trying to hit the ball, something that comes quite naturally to me. Not one for a wimp, the perfect swing needs enough momentum and energy to take the ball airborne. It allows the player to use up all that pent-up frustration and rage from landing in the bunker in the first place! Forget bunkers ... more like, bonkers!
