A solid bunker technique is important for all serious golfers. Good bunker play allows you to swing with confidence when approaching the green and gives you the ability to save strokes from difficult situations.
I want to make a few points before getting into a killer technique for playing bunker shots. Here’s the deal.
Almost all golfers will improve their score if they plan their way around the golf course to avoid ALL bunkers. It’s not always possible, you will always find the odd bunker or two (especially if you play on the Melbourne sandbelt) but by minimising bunker shots you’ll improve your score.
Why?
Because bunkers are unpredictable. You can get poor lies, the sand varies and sometimes the shots are really difficult. I’ve found that amateur players do better when they do their best to keep out of them. Long putts, chips and pitches from grass give you a better chance for success.
So don’t shoot at every pin. Learn to customise your strategy to keep away from sand traps where possible. Aim away from deep bunkers and situations you know will cause you trouble. This is potentially the best bunker lesson I can give – don’t go in them!
Onward.
So how should you play bunker shots?
Sidebar: I’m referring to green-side trap shots in this article. Longer bunker shots will be covered at another time.
There are two fundamentals. If you get these right you’ll do just fine. I’m not going to confuse you with too much instruction. Keeping with my basic teaching philosophy I give you enough guidance to be dangerous – but not too much detail that will slow you down.
The idea here is to watch the bunker videos below and then get out and put the concepts into practice. No matter how much golf instruction you receive there will always be some element of YOU needing to working out some detail.
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Is your chipping the worst part of your game?
If you struggle with even a basic chip shot this lesson is vitally important for you.
One of the most fascinating things I have noticed with golfers is they as a general rule have terrible chipping skills. For the most part the golfers I see in lessons have a sound full swing and good putting skills. This might surprise you but I have seen (and tested) this time after time.
The big area where golfers lose strokes is with their chipping. Not only are some golfers losing only a few strokes – poor chipping is causing golfers to have 10 or more shots per round. This is not a good thing at all.
A way I have tested this theory is to take a regular golfer to the putting green. We play a small putting match, going from hole to hole and keeping score of the strokes. Every time I’ve done this the golfer has been able to keep up with me – rarely are they more than a few strokes behind – in a few cases I’ve actually been beaten by them.
But then the fun starts. We move to the chipping green. The goal here is not just to chip the ball, but also to putt out and keep total score of shots taken. This gets interesting…
Once, after narrowly beating a higher handicapper in a putting match, I tried the chipping contest. My first chip (a difficult one) finished about one metre from the hole. He duffed his chip and then barely got his second shot onto the green. Two putts later he had taken four to my two.
My next chip went to within tap in distance. Worried about the duff from the previous time, he overcompensated and bladed the ball across the green and under a small bush. An unplayable lie, another chip and three putts later he had learned his lesson.
Even though this golfer was a good putter and was able to keep up with a better player, he totally came unstuck with the chipping game. It took only two holes for him to have eight more shots – if we continued this would have blown out even more. There are some valuable points to make here;
1. If you can two putt most of the time and don’t miss too many short putts (those of about one metre) chipping is far more important.
2. Chipping is a highly important because you miss a lot more greens than you hit.
3. If you can learn to chip the ball only slightly closer to the hole you will improve your score. This is because you greatly increase your probability of sinking the next putt.
4. Learning to get up and down from around the green about 50% of the time will improve your golf more than any other factor. To put this in perspective golf pros are around about the 80% mark. So I’m not trying to set you unrealistic goals. The basic chip shots I’m about to show you are simple and easy to learn. There’s nothing complicated about chipping – the problem is that you’ve neglected the only real fundamental of chipping to this point.
The only true way to improve your chipping
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The short game content will be added shortly. Content will include;
- chipping
- pitching
- bunker shots
- recovery shots
Check back soon for some added content.
