Are you struggling with your bunker play? This was certainly the case for Golf Monthly editor Michael Harris. He was suffering with bad strikes and inconsistent distance control so we recruited top coach Fredrik Lindblom to help. In this video, Fred offers some really simple but effective techniques for escaping sand every time.
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00:00So one of the best things about my job is if my golf game gets into trouble I've got a little
00:06black book of contacts that iPhone get in touch with to help me out and I posted on social media
00:13recently I had a roundup at Formby Golf Club and I posted a couple of videos and Arcos screenshots
00:19and I posted the best and the worst bits of my game so it was a great drive found this really
00:25tough fairway and then there was a bunker shot where I hit it about there and ended up 45 degrees
00:33to the right so posted on social media I love to share my wins and a lot of fails there
00:39Frederick popped into my replies and said man we need to sort out your setup we're going to sort
00:45out your bunker game let's meet up at the PGA show week here we are PGA show week Frederick help me
00:52out yeah I think yeah maybe once you hit one or two but I've already seen kind of what you're
00:57doing which is a very common kind of pattern I see in many amateurs when they're in the bunker
01:01okay go ahead and hit one here see what happens let's start out with a hole very good but what
01:11you can see there in my opinion is that the club is moving a little bit too much underneath the ball
01:18luckily here this sand is not very fluffy it's kind of compact so you get away with it hitting
01:23it kind of far and deep behind the golf ball but if the sand is too fluffy that club is just going to
01:29work too much underneath it and you're going to tend to hit a lot of shots yeah that happens yeah or
01:34you feel like you have to hit it so freaking hard you get it out of bunker right so what I see if you go
01:39to the side I'll show you kind of what I see which is very common that is a swing path that's way too
01:46far to the left and steep so a very common miss is obviously pretty much with all clubs of amateurs
01:53they swing out in kind of over the top yeah like a mad accident yeah exactly yeah pretty much T degree
01:58shopping woods yeah but so when you do that the club is going to tend to get a little bit too steep
02:04the leading edge and especially the hustle kind of leads into the ball so that's when you're thinking
02:11yeah pipe on yeah so if you see really good golfers a lot of them I I was kind of filming with Luke
02:17Donald a couple of months ago he's pretty good he's pretty good at a bunker right yeah uh he he feels
02:23like it's much more kind of neutral into it it still feels like it's swinging slightly left but a lot
02:29less to the left okay so if you can feel like you're more kind of having more neutral plane
02:33swinging up a little bit too more to the right you're not going to get as deep underneath the
02:38golf ball you're going to be a little bit more shallow and you don't have to hit the ball so hard
02:43for it to go the whole way you see how much spin that has that's nice yeah it's because the ball is
02:48not the club is not working too much underneath the golf ball so it's just a shallow divot you're
02:54going to feel that little clip yeah and the ball is going to stop right next to the pin so give it a go
02:59here okay so what i'm going to do tell me so your face look really open yeah where do you set it do
03:06you set it at a dress you do it or do you set it no grip so i cannot i spin the club until the club
03:12is open i don't do this and then yes okay yeah yeah yeah so that's just going to bring that hosel
03:17even more absolutely yeah so we're going to do this we don't want that we don't want that we want
03:22we're going to put an alignment stick here to mess with you a little bit okay we're going to put the ball
03:27on the outside here so if you were to swing too much to the left there you're going to hit the
03:31line i'm worried about hitting the alignments yeah and then we're also going to put the right foot
03:36back a little bit okay which is further going to help you to swing a little bit more into out
03:41okay the right foot is too open we're going to tend to swing left right okay so i'd always been
03:46probably open the club you know get it into a dress open the club then open my staff yeah i'm just
03:52bringing in a whole world of pain yeah yeah most often okay most likely because the swing path though so
03:57you can neutralize the swing path still feel like you really release the club like you actually did
04:01pretty good on that first one but with just a little bit more shallow so along the line of the
04:06stick along the line i'm worried about hitting the stick yeah of course yeah so try not to there you
04:11go lovely open there lovely so move back the right foot a little bit it's going to feel awkward yeah
04:17that way oh there you go close stance lovely just like that okay and now swing a little bit less hard
04:23okay a little bit softer along that line okay now it's all right so what happened there is that
04:30you bought them out a little bit too far behind okay so it's a little different feeling i mean a lot
04:34of things to think about yeah it shouldn't be too much back foot and then swing a little bit
04:39straighter try one more right so you we don't need to hit it so hard now the stance is a little bit
04:44too far up in the stance isn't it move a little bit more left yeah lovely right so we're just
04:48i would say like a ball inside the left heel is good for you yeah and again straight through
04:55on the line yeah and softer beautiful stop way faster there nice still slightly too far behind so
05:05we're going to do one more drill this is going to be kind of your baseline but here we're going to see
05:10exactly how skilled you are in the bunker here all right i want you to hit a shot here where you
05:15bottom out just on top of that line okay so we don't want to be behind it so give me three swings
05:21here where the divot is bottoming out just to the left of that line okay okay
05:26still too far back yeah so set up to that line again i'm going to tell you exactly what you're doing
05:34so if you were to see yourself in a reflector right in front of you you have a little bit too much tilt in
05:42the shoulders and the head is way back behind the golf ball okay so what what happens is that you're
05:47pretty much setting up like you're about to hit a driver yeah and the driver will hit up on the ball
05:51which means that the low point is behind the golf ball too right so instead so instead of setting up
05:57in this type of fashion we need to get the shoulders more level and the head a little bit more
06:03right on top of the golf ball and the beauty in the bunker is that we don't really need to create
06:08that much power with the body so we can try to maintain the head over the golf ball throughout
06:14the whole motion so we can control you see what that started right on top of the line that way
06:18so set up to the line again imagine like the ball is right there yeah so we want the shoulders to be
06:25more level so you can make the feel the left shoulder down you see what happened to the head
06:29yeah it brings it forward okay and now i want you to rotate around that uh around the head this is a lot
06:35of stuff to remember yeah okay okay rotate around there not much better now you started on top of
06:41the golf okay yeah okay so we're gonna give that a go here you don't need to hit it that hard we'll
06:47try it again now we're gonna hit a ball beautiful there so we're thinking about the shoulders still
06:53tilting a little bit too much there open up the face good and i feel like you're swinging a little bit
06:58more straighter and a little bit softer motion and bottoming out on that line beautiful shot look at the
07:04height and spin great shot now look at that not behind at all so to summarize okay so you were
07:12setting up you were swinging a little bit too much to the left yeah with the path and you were setting
07:17up like a driver yeah which means that you're gonna bottom up too far behind all the time because i think
07:22subconsciously i was thinking i need to get a bit of help to get it up in the air whereas i know really
07:28that i need to keep my weight on the on my left foot and you're gonna do that easier by just
07:34changing the tilt and the shoulder yeah so the lower the left shoulder is the easier this is to
07:38maintain the pressure left okay and then if you look at really good bunker players they have levered
07:44shoulders definitely more pressure left and then they just rotate around the head okay you don't see
07:49any pressure shift or slide sway they just go very rotational from that point so a little bit
07:57straighter path a little bit adjustment in the setup and you're gonna be golden that was a good shot
08:02you see the height difference yeah that went straight up in there great that's it everybody needs to see a bit
08:07of fredzer
08:08you