Why You Need This:

In this video, “How to Hit Bunker Shots Like a Pro”…

You’re going to find out just how easy bunker shots can be!

Soon, you’ll be getting up-and-down from a bunker the majority of the time.

Just use the proper technique I teach you here.

I’ll walk through everything in this one video…

• grip
• stance
• proper mindset
• how to use you sand wedge’s bounce
• and more

…so you can hit those crisp, clean bunker shots…

…that get up nice and high with lots of spin.

Watch this video today to and you’ll get all the tricks of the trade your favorite pros use out of the sand!

What's Covered: Techniques on how to get out of the bunker every time. Also going over a fun drill to help with divots.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:03

Video Transcription:

Hi, we’re back here in the bunker again, this shot is just asking for me to scull it right across the green, over into the woods, and into the hazard. It’s no fun, we’ve all been there before.

In this video, we’re going to talk about the proper way to play a bunker shot. They’re actually really easy, you should be able to get out of the bunker and get up and down the majority of the time, once we learn the proper technique.

So, I’m going to walk you through the entire thing today, hit those crisp, clean bunker shots that get up nice and high and get a lot of spin on them.

All right, so it all starts with the proper set up and the proper grip. Let’s go ahead, let’s pretend I’m going to hit this way for a second. If I take my normal grip, the leading edge of the face should be straight up and down, so I’ll line that up with the camera.

This would be perpendicular to the ground. If I opened up the face 90° then that leading edge right here would be parallel with the round.

What I want to do, is I want to open up the face until it’s about 45 degrees open. So I want you to go ahead, work through these drills in your living room if you’re watching them there. Go do the practice swings and then we’ll take it out to the course later.

Go ahead and open up the face about 45° of that leading edge. We’ll take my normal grip, I might choke up on the club just a tiny bit, so I have a little bit more control of the club.

Then here the only difference I’m going to make with my grip, is I’m going to turn my hand instead of being in a nice, neutral position, I’m going to turn my hand a little bit more to the left.

It’s almost like the palm of my hand is going more on top of the club, just a slight amount. The reason for this, the reason we’re setting the club face up open is that as I make contact with this ball, I want to bounce of the club to be skimming through the sand itself.

If you can imagine the leading edge of the club here, if I was hitting, this is the sand, let’s actually imagine this is water.

If I come down and the leading edge of the club, imagine this is kind of like a knife, catches the frst bit of water, the water’s going to catch up the face and the club is going to shoot down into the water.

The same thing happens with sand. If it catches any of the face here, it’s going to grab the face, the sand is going to slide against the face and because it has some loft on there, it’s going to shoot down into the sand, and you’r going to dig down into it.

Now a lot of people don’t open this club enough, and they have to pick it exactly clean. If they hit a little too much ball it goes shooting over the green like I just talked about.

As they get a little bit too far behind the ball, let’s imagine this bone on my hand here is the ball, get a little too far behind it, now that leading edge catches the sand, goes down in, you chunk the ball, and it goes two feet forward.

We’ve all done those before and know how frustrating they are. So that’s the first step there, we’ve got to get the club face open about 45°, we’re going to get that right hand instead of neutral a little bit more on to the left.

Now as we set it down to the ground, it’s going to look really, really open to most people, but that’s good because now we’re getting this flange on the bottom of the club to skip through the sand and to keep from digging.

It’s exactly what we want to have happen, as we’re sliding through there, we want that club to glide through the sand instead of dig down into it.

Now, once I set up there’s a couple other adjustments I want to do. Number one, I want to put the ball a little bit farther forward in my stance. Again, this is going to help me come nice and shallow, and to kind of smack into the sand rather than the club digging down into the sand.

Number two, I’m going to open up my stance a little bit. So if I’m going this way, let’s say that this would be square to that pin, I’m going to go ahead and open up my stance slightly.

This is because my face is open, I’m going to be swinging slightly to the left, not very much at all, and that’s going to kind of counteract that a little bit.

The next thing we’re going to work on here, I want to make sure that I get nice and low, so my legs are going to bend, I’m going to get nice and low.

The shaft angle instead of being my normal shaft angle, is going to be a little bit lower, and again, that’s going to help to open up the face and get a little bit more loft on the club.

I also want to be, as I set up here, body a little bit more vertical. So if you’re looking at my spine angle, it’s going to be pretty much straight up and down, I don’t want to be tilted away like I would in a full swing.

That’s going to keep my weight on my left side. I’m probably, I’d say 70 to 80 percent on my left side. As I go back and through, I’m going to keep my weight on my left side the entire time.

Those are your set up keys. Face 45° open, right hand a little bit more on top, ball a little bit forward. My stance is going to be slightly open to the left, my knees are nice and bent, that’s going to help to get the loft on there, and my spine is going to be more straight up in down, weight a little bit more to my left side.

Once I get those correct, go ahead and work through those keys in your living room, now I’m going to go ahead and feel like I smack the sand.

I’m going to feel like I take the flange of the bottom of the club there, this piece of metal that’s sticking down off the bottom, and I’m going to smack that sand.

This is one of the only times you’re actually allowed to flip the club. I actually want my club to hinge up quickly, and I want the club to actually go past my hands as I’m coming through contact, just like would be a flip in a normal swing.

That’s completely fine in the bunker shot because that’s going to get the face of the club working more up towards the sky, it’s going to help to launch it nice and high.

Now the last key to this, before I go ahead and hit some shots here and I give you another drill to work through these. I want to make sure I’m really aggressive.

The worst thing you can do in a bunker shot is be tentative and kind of make a half swing, because you’re scared to go over the green.

Well what’s going to happen is, I’m going to leave it in the bunker. Then the next time I make another half swing, I don’t want to leave it in the bunker, I’ll catch too much ball and it will shoot way over the top of the green.

I want to make sure that I have the face open enough, and I’m staying down enough to where I can be nice and aggressive, and really get some spin on that ball. As you’re practicing these, I want you to set up beside a green-side bunker here, with the pin not too far away.

I want you to get that face open enough, and take an aggressive enough swing to where that ball’s going to shoot out of there and it’s going to go way up into the sky, and it’s going to stop on the green and stop dead with some good spin on it.

The harder you swing, the more you open the face, that sand is going to grip the ball and it’s going to get tons and tons of spin on there.

If we take this kind of tentative swing, if we’re not very aggressive with it, if we don’t really thump the sand, then we’re going to not have enough club head speed to get any spin.

Let’s go ahead, I’m going to hit a few shots for you and work through a drill to how you exactly how I practice this now that we’ve got the fundamentals down.

All right, so before I give some demonstrations here, I want to show that as long as you’re doing this correctly, as long as the face is open, you should take a nice good swipe of the sand, you can really hit anything out of the bunker.

Here I’ve got a little pocket stapler, it was sitting around my house, I’ll go ahead and try to destroy this, get it as close to the pin as I can, just to show you guys before we go through the demo, you can really hit anything out of there if you’re using the right technique.

Let’s go ahead and try it out. There we go, I got out of the bunker. It wasn’t the prettiest shot in the world, but if we allow the sand to lift whatever we’re trying to hit out of the bunker, it’s going to be fine. Now let’s go ahead and let’s try some of these shots out, and I’ll give you a great drill for this.

All right, so now I’ve got a fantastic drill that’s going to help you get out of the bunker every single time, and get those nice, clean divots.

What I did was I drew a line, and the front line here is just in front of my ball. The back line is going to be just behind my ball, and between those two it’s going to be about a foot wide, just roughly a foot wide.

Then I just drew some hash marks, those are going to divide this up into some nice rectangles. Now what I’d like to have happen, is as I set up here and make some swings, as I swing, I want my divot to be kind of in the middle of those rectangles.

So you can see here my divot started there, it ended just at the end of the rectangle, that’s a pretty good, clean divot.

If I start to fall back, if I start to feel like I’m getting on my back foot, instead of keeping my weight centered on my left side the entire time, I start to fall back, now all of a sudden, my divot is going to be too far behind, and I’m going to see something like this, where my divot starts five or six inches behind where that rectangle would be.

If I start to go too far forward, and now I’m chopping down into it, you see my divot where it’s going a little bit too far in front of that rectangle. I want that divot to be right in the middle of that rectangle so I can see that I’m going to get out of three nice and clean.

Doesn’t have to be exact, but as long as we’re seeing it pretty close to the center, we know we’re doing well. Now for this kind of shot, not going to be able to make an incredibly hard swing, I’d like for you to practice a little bit farther away.

But go ahead and take a pretty aggressive cut. Again, weight on the left side, club nice and open, feet a little bit open, and I’m just going to take a nice, aggressive cut, try to hit a nice, high bunker shot.

There we go. Had a little bit of spin on it, checked up right by the hole, go ahead and work on this. I would recommend doing three or four practice swings through the checkerboard. Drop a ball down, make another swing, three or four more practice swings.

Go ahead and et about 100 repetitions in with this. For those of you that are struggling out of the bunker, it’s going to help you to kick this fear once and for all. It’s going to help you to be a better player, and if you get in trouble, you can get right back out, and maybe even turn it into a good situation.

Good luck to you guys, I’ll see you all soon.