Bunker Line Drill

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This drill is the bunker line drill, so the bunker line drill is probably the

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classic

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or the single most important drill for working on your bunker game.

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It helps you become really aware of how the club is hitting the sand.

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How the club hits the ground is a skill that you want to train for almost all

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of your shots

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other than driver inputting, and it becomes more apparent in the bunker.

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It's not an understatement for me to say every other video in this series is

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designed to

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help you improve the line drill.

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The line drill can be quite simple.

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All we're going to do is we're going to start by drawing a line, kind of

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lightly in the sand,

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and then we're going to practice making contact, trying to observe where the

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club makes contact

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with the sand compared to the line, how deep it goes, and how long or where the

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bottom

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of the divot is going to be.

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If I hit the line like that where it barely just skim the surface, that's not

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quite as

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good.

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If I go really deep and it gets down into the deeper part there, that's not as

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good either.

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My goal here is that I'm going to hit the line in a way representative of how I

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want

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to hit my bunker shots.

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I'm just going to practice hitting the line, and then as I get comfortable, if

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I can hit

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the line multiple times the same way, then I'm going to put a ball there and

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try to hit

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the line while letting the club swing underneath the golf ball.

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The line is going to be your big feedback when you're practicing your bunker

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shot.

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Sometimes I'll draw a second line about four inches or so, you know, hands-

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width in front

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of the first line to indicate where the bottom of the swing will be, but for

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just kind of

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the standard bunker line drill that a lot of us did, kind of during development

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, we're

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just going to draw a line, and we're going to try to make contact with that

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line and

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use it as a reference of where the club hits the sand.

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So the big factors for where the club is going to hit the sand is going to be

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where is your

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upper body in space.

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So the more that I'm behind it, the more I would tend to bottom out back here,

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the more

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that I got in front of it, that could potentially make me bottom out even more

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in front.

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But I kind of want to err on getting my nose in line with this golf ball.

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The other big factor is the straightness of the arm.

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So if the arms have fully straightened and then are bending on the way through,

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I'll

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tend to hit back here.

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If my arms are waiting longer, longer, longer, it's easier to hit way out in

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front.

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If I can time those arms straightening like that one, you'll see it pretty

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close to the

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line just on the back edge of it.

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So what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to use my good bunker technique

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that we talk

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about in the basic video, and we're just going to try and make a few swings

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where I'm going

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to make contact with the sand in a predictable way.

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And I can see that those three swings there, the bottom of their swing, entered

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the sand

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at about the same point, they're about the same depth, and the middle of the

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divot there

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is pretty close to there, maybe four inches in front.

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So if I had the golf ball anywhere in this space here, those would have been an

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okay shot.

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So I'm going to use this to really hone in my contact by focusing on how the

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club is

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hitting the sand.

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Once you've gotten comfortable, then you can add a golf ball.

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You're still going to focus on trying to hit the line, but the golf ball is

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going to get

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in the way.

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So we'll go through quick little demo.

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So I've got the line right back there, golf ball's about an inch, inch and a

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half in front

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of it.

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So I'm going to take a swing, all right, that hit a little bit behind the line.

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I was kind of rushing it.

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So we'll do a little better one.

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There, that smacked the sand pretty nice.

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Now we're going to focus on hitting the sand, hitting the line in that same

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fashion, not

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too bad, hit the line right there.

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Now I usually leave enough room so that I can move forward, get a practice

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swing where

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I hit the line kind of that same way, and then hit another pretty nice one

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there.

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That one hit right on the line that came out great.

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So I would use this, use the line pretty much every, a version of the line,

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whether it's

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the checker board, the two ones or the regular line, but use some type of line

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with almost

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every bunker practice until you get to the point where you don't really need it

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and you

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can just focus on using your setup to control where the club hits the sand, but

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while you're

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developing your bunker shot, you want really good feedback and there's no

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better feedback

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in the bunker than drawing a line.