BUNKER GAME

USE SPEED, FIND COMMITMENT

In the ideal bunker strike, the club enters the sand an inch or two behind the ball. The ball rises on the slender carpet of sand the club takes. Because sand is heavy, the club needs to be moving quickly to fire enough energy into this muffled strike.

However, the typical longer handicapper is afraid to use speed in greenside bunkers. It’s not surprising; it feels totally wrong to be firing the club through impact when the pin is only a handful of yards away. As a result many club players are hesitant in sand, and get correspondingly poor results.

And yet Dustin Johnson, like all elite players, really zips the club through the sand. He can do this because he is delivering a very weak, open face; with the face wide open it's impossible to hit the ball any distance. That gives you the confidence to swing with speed… and as a consequence, commitment.

Here Dustin shares his own drill for setting and maintaining loft in sand; turn over for some step-bystep instruction, designed to help you become a more confident and committed bunker player.

DUSTIN SAYS...

I’m 6ft 4in, but no elite golfer likes to feel tall in sand. When you stand tall, your action tends to be steeper and more choppy, and finding that optimal sand strike – for me around an inch behind the ball – on an effective, shallow attack angle becomes much, much harder. That’s why I like to get low in sand… and I would advise you to as well.

My address has much more of a squatting quality than my regular set-up. My feet are more widely spread, my knees more bent, my backside sticking out more and the handle of the club closer to the sand. This gives me a whole range of benefits that make finding the right strike much easier...

The lower you get, the easier it is to get the ball up. The more height I need, the lower I’ll go.

A wider stance with more flexed knees tends to lock out the lower body, giving your action a firm base and great stability. That helps you strike the sand accurately behind the ball, every time.

In bunkers, I like to rotate the face open to add loft and sole bounce. Lowering the handle brings the aim of the face back to square.

A lower handle means a flatter shaft and swing angle. That allows you to take shallower and more effective sand divots.

Playing with loft

From bunkers, we need to play with plenty of loft on the face. Loft encourages the rounded, back edge of the sole, or bounce, to engage the sand and promotes a shallow, skimming strike. It also, of course, helps the ball rise up and out. Because I play with a strong face, I need to work on this. I start by opening the face flat and gathering some sand on it. The drill is simply to swing back, keeping the sand on the face long enough for the club to throw it over my right shoulder. If I lose the loft on the face, it slides off and I get a neckful of sand.