Confessions of a Hacker – Playing in the sandpit

Filed in Other by on March 28, 2012

As a kid, sandpits were more often than not a source of fun – building castles, pushing toy trucks through them, even using their contents to throw at someone of the opposite sex whom you quite liked (admittedly, five year-olds have rather unrefined flirting techniques). For many a club player though, the golfing equivalent of a sandpit is a source of great anxiety. How can you become a better bunker player?

I’ve played for enough years now to have developed a technique that has long since removed the fear of bunkers, but a number of my usual playing partners retain some degree of fear. Admittedly, inconsistent levels of sand across different bunkers on the same course do not help matters.

Inconsistent levels of sand reared its head for me when playing Yowani’s par-3 12th hole on Sunday. After a 4-iron found the left hand greenside bunker, the recovery shot would have been reasonable…. save for the fact that underneath a few millimetres of sand was a concrete-like base. A fraction more space beyond the pin would have seen the damage minimised, but instead the ball dribbled into the front left corner of the bunker to the right of the green. The second bunker was laden with sand and thus the ball remained right up against the lip, meaning I would have to stand out of the bunker (and almost half a metre above the ball) and try to slide a sand wedge under the ball to hit a deft shot that needed to go no more than six metres in total. Suffice to say it didn’t go even remotely to script, and I wandered off with a demoralising triple bogey.

Much like putting and other forms of chipping, bunker play is a fairly individualistic thing, where different players find different ways that they feel comfortable with. Nonetheless, some of the basic principles are all but universal: aim your feet and body left of the target, open the face, swing down the line of your body (to cut across the ball and impart slice spin), hit into the sand and allow the sand to ‘splash’ the ball out.

Two of the best within the professional ranks on this front are Luke Donald and Ernie Els. Watch them play from bunkers over a few tournaments and you’ll see a variety of different style shots played: high and soft lobs, crisp low shots that check up sharply on the second bounce, ‘chunk and runs’ that hit the green and roll for quite a while until they reach the pin, etc. Apart from when the ball is buried, the underlying technique remains similar, with the length and speed of the swing handling most of the variation between shot types.

What do you do about inconsistent sand depth in the bunkers at your local club though? There are some limits to what you can do here. The Rules of Golf do not permit ‘testing the surface’, but they do allow you to walk to your ball (obviously enough – how else would you hit it?) and then dig your feet into the sand when ‘taking your stance’ in preparation for your shot.

These two simple things provide great information. Did your feet sink at all as you walked to your ball, or did it feel more like walking on firm ground? Did your feet dig into the sand easily when taking your stance, or did you struggle to make any indent?

The harder and more compact the surface, the less ‘give’ the sand will have when you hit your shot and therefore the closer it will become to hitting a chip shot off grass. That might mean that you open the clubface a little less and reduce the length of your swing. Conversely, if the sand is soft and deep, there will be a lot of ‘give’ and therefore a more open face/ stronger swing may be necessary to get through the sand in the manner intended.

Practicing bunker shots regularly until you develop a method that you feel comfortable with is important too. The correlation between players who are intimidated by bunker shots and those who actually practice such shots from time to time is almost zero.

If you’re a player who struggles in the sand, substitute your next trip to the driving range or nine holes of social golf for a session in the practice bunker at your local club. Try a few different stances, swing speeds etc. out until you find the one that works best for you. Just remember that you’re too old to throw sand at your mixed fourball partner…. unless you really, really like them and their friends have already told you that the feeling is mutual…. what? Some flirting methods stand the test of time, dammit!

Previous ‘Confessions of a Hacker’ columns:

(1)  Seeking help, (2) Racking them up, (3) Holding your nerve, (4) Five-foot putts, (5) Letting the Big Dog eat, (6)  Slow play, (7) Trust the yardage , (8) Learning from low markers, (9) Learning from high markers

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