Which is tougher in winter: wet, compacted sand or a muddy greenside lie?

Let’s face it, neither shot is appealing. The concrete bunker is a daunting prospect, but I’d rather tackle it than face that most dreaded of greenside scenarios – the soft, muddy lie. Just writing it has me suffering palpitations.

I can picture the scene all too clearly. Having just pulled or pushed a shot towards a green, you walk up with just a hope that your ball may have clung on to the fringe. When there’s no sight of it, you pray for it to have found a grassy spot. But it’s to no avail

– your Titleist has come to rest in a patch that resembles the penalty area of a non-league football pitch after 90 minutes of chopping and hacking. There’s no chance of a chip-and-run as the ground between you and the pin is too soft and rough, so it will have to be loft.

You just know there are only two realistic shot options from this point – the ‘knife’ and the ‘dunch’. Your hands are shaking as you take the wedge from your bag and your knees are already buckling as you address the ball. You must catch it cleanly… but not thin! The club goes back (a little too far) and, with no self-belief at all, you decelerate into impact, dipping your body horribly and dunking the club into the mud behind the ball, moving it approximately four inches.

Cue that horrible and familiar feeling of ineptitude and hopelessness.

You don’t want to fat it again, so you snatch at attempt two and strike the ball halfway up, sending it flying across the green into another patch of mud on the other side of the putting surface. It’s oh so inevitable and quite simply the thing of golfing nightmares. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. Give me a rock-solid bunker any day of the week.

Wet, compacted sand

says

Wet winter conditions make the game harder in many ways, especially given the sheer volume of off-season rainfall we seem to get these days. And yes, just missing a green, thinking it won’t be too bad and getting up there to find your ball sat uninvitingly on soft mud adds an unwelcome degree of difficulty to the greenside chip. But there are relatively simple ways to mitigate this – set up with the club more upright to minimise turf/mud interaction or choose a less-lofted club, if practical, to reduce the risk of burying the leading edge in the ground.

But wet, compacted sand is a tougher proposition, especially where steep faces or lips are involved and elevation is vital. While most golfers know to take an inch or so of sand in a routine shot, what if the surface is compacted with no chance of getting the club through the sand in the same way?

We’re taught to use the bounce on bunker shots, but bouncing is the last thing you want here. You realise this the moment you set foot in such a bunker, just before remembering you saw a tip about this a while ago. But what did it say – open the face, close the face or put the ball back in your stance to attack it more steeply? Your mind is blank.

You briefly ponder chipping it off the top, but that’s risky as, with far less clubhead speed than in a normal splash shot, contact only has to be a fraction heavy for the ball to go nowhere. It is at this point of maximum confusion that you make an unconvincing pass at the ball with the club typically bouncing early, resulting in thin contact that sends the ball hurtling into the face or scuttling 30 yards through the green.

Both shots are unappealing, but compacted bunker sand is the tougher of the two as far as I’m concerned.