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Struggling with your bunker play? In this golf lesson, PGA Professional Dan Grieve provides a complete guide to mastering greenside bunker shots. Learn the essential setup, swing mechanics, and a simple drill to get out of the sand consistently. Plus, discover how to adapt your technique for different sand conditions, from soft and fluffy to tight and compact lies.
Transcript
00:04Hi, Dan Grief here, Head Professional at Web & Golf Club and here we're talking about the
00:08greenside bunker shot and the technique in which you need to be able to splash that ball out every
00:12time. So it really all begins with setup. So I like to see golfers standing nice and wide,
00:18really very important to create a nice wide base when you play these shots because the biggest
00:22fault I see is the golfer moves side to side and that creates thin shots and fat shots. So let's
00:27get really wide like a driver and get this left foot turned out around about 45 degrees and what
00:32that allows you to do then is push your left knee over your foot and get this right leg kicking
00:37in.
00:37So you'll find the majority of your weight, perhaps up to 80%, is forward on this left side.
00:42Now for this soft sand you can afford to allow your right shoulder to drop back a little bit.
00:46You don't want to get your upper body stacking over your left leg too much this way. So allow
00:51the right shoulder to drop a little bit lower and we'll have the ball position just inside the left
00:56heel. Very important as well to make sure that the shaft line mirrors that so we have the shaft line
01:02neutral. Hands don't go ahead and they don't come back. Really nice and neutral. The face can be
01:09slightly open because I'm standing far further away from the ball, lots of knee flex, okay that allows me
01:15to get more into the sand and really feel like I'm rooted and strong down into the sand. And then
01:20from
01:21there it's about making sure that we keep the loft and bounce on the club going back and then through
01:26the same thing making sure the chest turns. So I'll just hit one here.
01:32You see it splashes nicely there. Now one of the things that allowed me to play that shot really
01:36nicely was the fact I kept the loft and bounce on and here's a really simple drill you can do
01:41is put
01:41some sand on the club face and see if you can keep that sand on and see if you can
01:45throw it over that
01:46shoulder there, over your back shoulder. Now if you do that that means the left wrist is getting cupped
01:50and the loft and bounce is on and equally you can put some sand on the club face and see
01:55if you can
01:55throw it over your front shoulder and if you can do that you've got the same thing going on there
02:00where the club face isn't turning over you're holding the loft and bounce on and creating that
02:04nice splash shot. So one of the real skills when you get into a bunker is being able to read
02:07the lie
02:08and make relevant adaptions for the lie. Now we don't always get that lovely soft fluffy sand that we had
02:13for
02:13the first shot. Sometimes the bunkers might be have less sand in, they might be more compact and we need
02:19to
02:19slightly change how we how we approach the shot because if you're going there with this one
02:24dimensional approach of just using your standard splash shot you'll um you'll have a lie like this
02:29okay and then you will play the shot and there we go off it goes it's thinned you'll do well
02:35to find
02:36your ball. So there was nothing wrong with my technique there for the standard splash shot
02:40what was wrong with my intelligence I wasn't able to read the lie very well I wasn't able to
02:44adapt how I put the bounce into the sand so when you get a tight lie like this you have
02:49to set up
02:50slightly differently so we'll keep the stance the same you can very much get the weight forward on
02:54the left side but the shoulder line will now be more left as well so you get your left shoulder
02:58more over your left foot and that's this is simply going to steepen your angle of attack it's going to
03:03get you coming in more downward into the sand and more with the leading edge rather than the trailing
03:07edge of the bounce so it's going to dig down a bit more and just it's a bit of insurance
03:12about that
03:12that bounce happening and that ball going too far the ball position also I just move that back a
03:18little bit and add a little bit more forward lean of the shaft whereas before it was very neutral
03:22we're now going to shift this way a little bit put a bit of that lean in and you'll see
03:27the difference
03:27in the follow-through my follow-through for the soft sand you can see it's a full and complete release
03:33because I'm using the trailing edge from this lie here you'll see the difference in the follow-through
03:38so the ball goes back the hands go forward and the follow-through is much shorter and more curtailed
03:45and that means my leading edge is going more down into the sand with the handle leading
03:49and that means I'm not going to get that semi-thin shot which is such a dangerous shot out the
03:53sand
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