Greenside Bunker Shot

Are you looking to hit better bunker shots? Do you tend to hit the ground too early or not at all?  All bad bunker shots have one major thing in common, you missed your target! What is the target? The target is the sand 3 inches behind the golf ball.  If a player strikes 3 inches prior to the ball with a thin divot you will get the ball out with ease every time.  I am going to teach you how your setup and motion could help you achieve that goal more often.

Setup-

The first thing that needs to be setup correctly is the club face.  In order to avoid taking too deep of a divot we have to activate the bounce.  The bounce allows the club to glide along the sand which gives us the desired depth of divot.  The way you do that is by leaning the handle away from the target, so that the club face has more loft and the leading edge of the club is off the ground.

The second thing is to put the ball position forward of center, this ensures that you strike sand first.  With the clubface lofted and the ball position forward that should mean that the handle of the club is pointing at your center.

From there you take your stance.  The stance width should be equal to what you normal driver width is, approximately shoulder width apart.

The pressure in your feet should be 60% forward leg 40% back leg, this helps promote the correct location for the strike of the sand.

Swing-

Once the setup is in the correct position than from there the motion is what I like to call a long and lazy arm swing.  What that means is there is very little rotation of the lower and upper body.  Instead the arms pick up the club to create a long swing that way they can deliver the club to the proper location.

A critical motion when it comes to hitting a proper bunker shot is to activate the wrists at the bottom of the swing.  With doing that you will keep the loft on the clubface through impact, while also keeping the angle that you are hitting the sand flat.  These 2 things combined help both loft the ball out of the bunker and also keep the divot shallow.

Conclusion-

If you could get the setup in the correct position and work on the swing motion you are going to be well on your way to hitting high soft bunker shots safely onto the green.  Good Luck!