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Tips To Play The Sand Trap

By Lee MacRae

Getting out of a bunker or sand trap in one shot can do wonders for your confidence and your golf game. Follow along as we lay out some tips, tricks and hints to help you with your sand play and watch the improvement in your next round of golf.

Hitting from a buried lie in the bunker [otherwise known as a "fried egg"] isn't as difficult as most golfers think. In fact, a shot that gets the ball out is closer to a normal golf shot than a conventional bunker shot is. That's because you play the shot with your clubface closed. Remember that the flange of a sand wedge is designed to prevent you from digging into the sand. But with a buried lie, digging in is exactly what you want to do. Close the face of your wedge, hit down into the sand and inch or two behind your ball. This is one of the few sand shots in which a follow-through isn't just important, it shouldn't exist at all! Some golfers have even been known to let the club go at impact. Note; this shot can also be played with a pitching wedge, which is almost guaranteed to dig in.

Visual imagery is commom in bunker play. Some instructors tell students to imagine that the face of the club is the palm of their hands, which they "slap" under the ball in the hitting zone. We prefer to think of money. A dollar bill is slightly more than six inches long. That means that if the bill is laid under a golf ball, about two inches of the ball would protrude back from the bill. As the ideal "explosion shot" demands that you hit into the sand roughly two inches behind the ball, you should pretend that you're hitting the dollar ball out of the bunker. This is an especially useful image because in order to hit the ball right out of the bunker, you'll need to complete your follow-through, and that's another important element of just about every sand shot.

Landing in someone else's footprint in a bunker can be very frustrating. Especially if they are rakes stationed around the sand! But getting worked up about someone else's misdeeds won't help you escape. The trick here is to treat your ball as though it were in a buried lie. Pick up the club sharply and hit sharply down behind the ball to avoid the surrounding barrier of sand. You may also want to adjust your angle of attack depending on how the footprint lies. The only difference between the footprint shot and a buried lie shot is that you use a sand wedge and not a pitching wedge. You want to dig through the sides of the footprint [hence the angle of attack] but beyond that it's a normal sand shot.

The average golfer usually fears the shot from a sand bunker and is defeated before they even attempt one. With practice, keeping in mind the proper technique and a few tips and hints, sand play will be a lot easier than you imagined. And your golf game will be better for it.

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Keep the left wrist in a flat position in relation to the back of the left forearm and back of left hand. This will allow the wrist to hinge naturally,not break,which will allow the club to go back only as far as the shoulders turn. Practice this drill daily,and before you know it your muscles will get conditioned and trained to stretch further under control to create the arc you desire without overswinging. Going to parallel is not the answer to solid shot making,and power. Distance is the speed of the lower body pulling the speed of the motion of your left arm corresponding together to launch the ball towards the target.
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