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The ability to hit a high, soft bunker shot can be key when it comes to scoring. Players that struggle with this usually have a large amount of face movement, or more specifically, shaft & forearm rotation.
To avoid bringing your "stock" swing to the sand, a simple cue to focus on is the feeling of zero face rotation from impact to finish. This will require that you keep your right palm facing up and that you maintain the relationship between the leading edge and shaft as it was set at address.
Overall, this can be a very effective cue for improved bunker play, especially when you are short-sided or faced with a high "lip".
Playlists: Finesse Wedge - Chipping and Pitching
Tags: Poor Contact, Bunker, Drill, Intermediate
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The drill is no face rotation on bunker shots.
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So while I say no face rotation, what I really mean is no major shaft rotation kind of
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like this.
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So if I was hitting this at this camera here, what you would see is that on the way
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through after it went through the sand to keep the bounce exposed, the hand would stay
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more underneath kind of like this.
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Instead of letting it rotate on top and getting a lot of forearm rotation like we do
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in the stock full swing.
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If you have a lot of shaft rotation, it will tend to throw the low point forward, which
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can cause you to hit some thin shots or blade shots.
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It will take away bounce, which we'll cause the club to dig and come out really low and
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have a lot of run, best case scenario.
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Oftentimes it gets your path going too much to wide on the way through, which causes
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you to want to hang back.
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So then you get into the blade chunk pattern.
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Causes a whole host of problems.
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So what you want to start practicing is you want to start practicing finishing with
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the leading edge pretty much the same to the shaft as it was down here at impact.
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So here it's slightly open compared to the shaft.
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There in follow-through it would be slightly open in front of the shaft.
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If you do that, you'll have a much better chance of getting the club to slide through the
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sand, kind of make that noise there as opposed to if it rotate, you'll hear it kind of
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dig and go down into the sand.
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Because if the leading edge hits because I've closed the face, it will tend to drop down
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like this.
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But if I keep that face open, even though the club is trying to go down, it will
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skid because of this bound angle.
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So when you're practicing this, you're just going to focus on trying to get to that
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follow-through position and check and make sure that your right hand is slightly under
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your left and that the face hasn't rotated.
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Once you can do that with just the simple line and controlling your low point, then you
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can try a few with the golf ball getting in the way.
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They're checking the follow-through position.
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That came out pretty good and you can see when I got it into that follow-through position,
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the club was still facing up.
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That's why the club was able to slide underneath the golf ball, pop it up.
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If you have a lot of trouble when you have a high lip because it launches really low,
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this is definitely one thing that you want to explore because as a big impact on the
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line chain goal, coming out of the sand.
