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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
00:06little
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
00:24really
00:24tough 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
00:51me
00:52out yeah I think yeah they want you hit one or two but I've already seen kind of what you're
00:57doing
00:57which is a very common kind of pattern I see in many amateurs when they're in the bunker okay go
01:03ahead and hit one here see what happens let's start out with a hole very good but what you can
01:12see
01:12there in my opinion is that the club is moving a little bit too much underneath the ball luckily
01:18here the sand is not very fluffy it's kind of compact so you get away with it hitting it kind
01:24of far and deep behind the golf ball but if the sand is too fluffy that club is just going
01:29to work too
01:29much underneath it and you're going to tend to hit a lot of shots yeah that happens yeah or you
01:34feel
01:35like you have to hit it so freaking hard you get it out of bunker right so what I see
01:39if you go to the
01:40side I'll show you kind of what I see which is very common that is a swing path that's way
01:46too far to
01:47the left and steep so a very common missus obviously pretty much with all clubs of amateurs they swing
01:54out in kind of over the top yeah like a mad accident exactly yeah pretty much t-degree shopping woods
01:59yeah
01:59but so when you do that the club is going to tend to get a little bit too steep the
02:05leading edge and
02:05especially the hustle kind of leads into the ball so that's when you're checking yeah so if you see
02:13really good golfers a lot of them I I was kind of filming with Luke Donald a couple of months
02:18ago
02:18pretty good he's pretty good at a bunker right yeah yeah he he feels like he's much more kind of
02:25neutral into it it still feels like he's swinging slightly left but a lot less to the left okay so
02:30if
02:31you can feel like you're more kind of having more neutral plane swinging up a little bit too more to
02:35the right you're not going to get as deep underneath the golf ball you're going to be a little bit
02:40more shallow and you don't have to hit the ball so hard for it to go the whole way you
02:45see how much
02:45spin that has that's nice yeah it's because the ball is not and the club is not working too much
02:51underneath the golf ball so it's just a shallow divot you're going to feel that little clip yeah and the
02:57ball is going to stop right next to the pin so give it a go here okay and what i'm
03:01going to do
03:01tell me so your face look really open yeah where do you set it do you set it out of
03:07dress you do it
03:07or do you set it no in the grip so i cannot i spin the club until the club is
03:12open i don't do this
03:14and then yes okay yeah yeah yeah so that's just going to bring that hosel even more absolutely yeah
03:19so we're going to do this we don't want that we don't want that we want we're going to put
03:23an
03:23alignment stick here to message you a little bit okay we're going to put the ball on the outside
03:28here so if you were to swing too much to the left there you're going to hit the line i'm
03:32worried
03:32about hitting the alignments yeah and then we're also going to put the right foot back a little bit
03:37okay which is further going to help you to swing a little bit more into out okay the right foot
03:42is
03:42too open we're going to tend to swing left right okay so i'd always been probably open the club you
03:48know get it into a dress open the club then open my style yeah i'm just bringing in a whole
03:52world of
03:53pain yeah yeah most often okay most likely because the swing path though so if you can neutralize
03:58the swing path still feel like you really release the club like you actually did pretty good on
04:02that first one but would use a little bit more shallow so along the line of the stick along the
04:06line i'm worried about hitting the stick yeah of course yeah try not to there you go lovely open
04:12there lovely so move back the right foot a little bit it's going to feel awkward yeah that way
04:18there you go close stance lovely just like that okay and now swing a little bit less hard okay a
04:24little bit softer along that line okay now it's all right so what happened there is that you bought
04:30them out a little bit too far behind okay so it's a little different feeling i mean a lot of
04:34things to
04:34think about yeah it shouldn't be too much back foot and then swing a little bit straighter try one more
04:41right so you we don't need to hit it so hard now the stance is it's a little bit too
04:44far up in the stance
04:45isn't it move a little bit more left yeah lovely right so we're just i would say like a ball
04:51inside
04:51the left heel is good for you yeah and again straight through on the line yeah and softer
05:00beautiful stop way faster there nice still slightly too far behind so we're going to do one more drill
05:07this is going to be kind of your baseline but here we're going to see exactly how skilled you are
05:11in the
05:11bunker here all right i want you to hit a shot here where you bottom out just on top of
05:17that line
05:18okay so we don't want to be behind it so give me three swings here where the divot is bottoming
05:23out
05:23just to the left of that line okay okay okay still too far back yeah so set up to that
05:32line again i'm
05:33going to tell you exactly what you're doing so if you were to see yourself in a reflection right in
05:38front of you you have a little bit too much tilt in the shoulders and the head is way back
05:44behind
05:44the golf ball okay so what what happens is that you're pretty much setting up like you're about
05:48to hit a driver yeah and the driver will hit up on the ball which means that the low point
05:52is
05:52behind the golf ball too right so instead so instead of setting up in this type of fashion we need
06:00to
06:00get the shoulders more level and the head a little bit more right on top of the golf ball and
06:05the beauty
06:05in the bunker is that we don't really need to create that much power with the body so we can
06:10try to maintain the head over the golf ball throughout the whole motion so we can control
06:15you see what that started right on top of the line that way so set up to the line again
06:21imagine like the ball is right there so we want the shoulders to be more level so you take the
06:26feel
06:26the left shoulder down you see what happened to the head yeah it brings it forward okay and now i
06:31want
06:32to rotate around that uh around the head this is a lot of stuff to remember yeah okay okay rotate
06:38around there not much better now you started on top of the golf or the line yeah okay so we're
06:43gonna
06:43give that a go here you don't need to hit it that hard we'll try it again now we're gonna
06:48hit a ball
06:50beautiful there so we're thinking about the shoulder still tilting a little bit too much there
06:55open up the face good and i feel like you're swinging a little bit more straighter and a little bit
07:00soft emotion and bottoming out on that line beautiful shot look at the height and spin
07:05great shot now look at that not behind at all so to summarize okay so you were setting up you
07:13were
07:13swinging a little bit too much to the left yeah with the path and you were setting up like a
07:18driver
07:18yeah which means that you're gonna bottom up too far behind all the time because i think subconsciously
07:23i was thinking i need to get a bit of help to get it up in the air whereas i
07:27know really that
07:28i need to keep my weight on the on my left foot and you're gonna do that easier by just
07:34changing
07:34the tilt and the shoulder yeah so the lower the left shoulder is the easier this is to maintain the
07:39pressure left okay and then if you look at really good bunker players they have levered shoulders
07:44definitely more pressure left and then they just rotate around the head okay you don't see any
07:49pressure shift or slide sway they just go very rotational from that point so a little bit straighter
07:57path a little bit adjustment in the setup and you're gonna be golden that was a good shot you see
08:02the
08:02height difference yeah that went straight up in there great that's it everybody needs to see a bit of
08:08frederick
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