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  • 8 minutes ago
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.
Transcript
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 they want to hit one or two but I've already seen kind of what you're doing
00:57which is a very common kind of pattern I see in many amateurs when they're in the bunker okay
01:02go ahead and hit one here see what happens let's start out with a hole very good but what you can
01:12see there in my opinion is that the club is moving a little bit too much underneath the ball luckily here
01:19the sand is not very fluffy it's kind of compact so you get away with it hitting it kind of far and
01:24deep behind the golf ball but if the sand is too fluffy that club is just going to work too much
01:29underneath it and you're going to tend to hit a lot of shots yeah that happens yeah or you feel like
01:35you have to hit it so freaking hard you get it out of bunker right so what I see if you go to the side
01:40I'll show you kind of what I see which is very common that is a swing path that's way too far to
01:47the left and steep so a very common miss is obviously pretty much with all clubs of amateurs they swing
01:54out 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 change it
02:11yeah so if you see really good golfers a lot of them i i was uh kind of filming with luke donald a
02:18couple of months ago he's pretty good he's pretty good at a bunker right yeah uh he he feels like
02:23he's much more kind of neutral into it it still feels like he's swinging slightly left but a lot less
02:29to the left okay so if you can feel like you're more kind of having more neutral plane swinging
02:34up a little bit too more to the right you're not gonna get as deep underneath the golf ball you're
02:39gonna be a little bit more shallow and you don't have to hit the ball so hard for it to go the whole
02:44way you see how much spin that has that's nice yeah it's because the ball is not the club is not
02:50working too much underneath the golf ball so it's just a shallow divot you're gonna feel that little
02:55clip yeah and the ball is gonna stop right next to the pin so give it a go here okay what i'm gonna
03:01do tell me so your face look really open yeah where do you set it do you set it out of dress you
03:07do it or do you set it no in the grip so i cannot i spin the club until the club is open i don't do
03:13this and then yes okay yeah yeah yeah so that's just gonna bring that puzzle even more absolutely yeah
03:19so we're gonna do this we don't want that we don't want that we want we're gonna put an alignment
03:23stick here to message you a little bit okay we're gonna put the ball on the outside here so if you
03:29wear to swing too much to the left there you're gonna hit the line i'm worried about hitting the
03:32alignments yeah and then we're also gonna put the right foot back a little bit okay which is further
03:38gonna help you to swing a little bit more into out okay the right foot is too open we're gonna tend
03:43to swing left right okay so i'd always been probably open the club you know get it into a dress open the
03:49club then open my style yeah i'm just bringing in a whole world of pain yeah yeah most often okay
03:55most likely because the swing path though so if you can neutralize the swing path still feel like
03:59you really release the club like you actually did pretty good on that first one but with just a
04:04little bit more shallow so along the line of the stick along the line i'm worried about hitting
04:08the stick yeah of course yeah try not to there you go lovely open there lovely so move back the
04:14right foot a little bit it's gonna feel awkward yeah that way oh there you go close stance lovely
04:20just like that okay and now swing a little bit less hard okay a little bit softer along that line
04:27okay now it's all right so what happened there is that you bought them out a little bit too far
04:31behind okay so it's a little different feeling i mean a lot of things to think about yeah it shouldn't
04:36be too much back foot and then swing a little bit straighter try one more right so you we don't need
04:42to hit it so hard now the stance is it's a little bit too far up in the stance isn't it move a little
04:46bit more left yeah lovely right just i would say like a ball inside the left heel is good for you
04:52yeah and again straight through on the line yeah and softer beautiful stop way faster there nice still
05:03slightly too far behind so we're going to do one more drill this is going to be kind of your baseline
05:09but here we're going to see exactly how skilled you are in the bunker here all right i want you
05:14to hit a shot here where you bottom out just on top of that line okay so we don't want to be behind
05:19it so give me three swings here where the divot is bottoming out just to the left of that line okay okay
05:29okay still too far back yeah so set up to that line again i'm going to tell you exactly what you're
05:34doing so if you were to see yourself in a reflector right in front of you you have a little bit too
05:40much tilt in the shoulders and the head is way back behind the golf ball okay so what what happens is
05:46that you're pretty much setting up like you're about to hit a driver yeah and the driver will hit
05:50up on the ball which means that the low point is behind the golf ball too right so instead so instead
05:57of setting up in this type of fashion we need to get the shoulders more level and the head a little bit
06:03more right on top of the golf ball and the beauty in the bunker is that we don't really need to
06:07create that much power with the body so we can try to maintain the head over the golf ball throughout
06:13the whole motion so we can control you see what that started right on top of the line that way so
06:18set 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 yeah
06:29it brings it forward okay and now i want you to rotate around that uh around the head this is a
06:35lot of stuff to remember yeah okay okay rotate around there not much better now you started on
06:41top of the golf or the line okay yeah okay so we're gonna give that a go here you don't need to hit it
06:46that hard we'll try it again now we're gonna hit a ball beautiful there so we're thinking about the
06:52shoulders still tilting a little bit too much there open up the face good and i feel like you're swinging a
06:58little bit more straighter and a little bit softer motion and bottoming out on that line beautiful
07:04shot look at the height and spin great shot now look at that not behind at all so to summarize okay
07:12so you were setting up you were swinging a little bit too much to the left yeah with the path and you
07:17were setting up like a driver yeah which means that you're gonna bottom up too far behind all the time
07:21because i think subconsciously i was thinking i need to get a bit of help to get it up in the air
07:26whereas i know really that i need to keep my weight on the on my left foot and you're gonna do that
07:32easier by just changing the tilt and the shoulder yeah so the lower the left shoulder is the easier
07:38this is to maintain the pressure left okay and then if you look at really good bunker players
07:43they have lever shoulders definitely more pressure left and then they just rotate around the head okay
07:48you don't see any pressure shift or slide sway sway no no they just go very rotational from that point
07:56so a little bit straighter path a little bit adjustment in the setup and you're gonna be
08:00golden that was a good shot you see the height difference yeah that went straight up in there
08:04great that's it everybody needs to see a bit of frederick
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