Bunker Play

The fundamentals

Set up to the ball square with your left foot turned out. The ball should be positioned inside the left heel with the ball position line running through your left breast and ear (seen in photo 1), a line drawn from the middle of your sternum should be positioined 1 inch behind the ball. This allows the bodyweight to be slightly left in the set up. The shaft of your club should be vertical to allow the bounce to do its job through impact. The knees are pressed towards the target to encourage leg work through the shot. To allow a high soft landing shot try out the butterfly grip (left hand should be in a strong position on the club, you should see at least three knuckles on the back of your left hand. The right hand is placed in a weak postion on the club, the V between your right fore finger and thumb should point towards your left ear).

During the backswing the club should flow and have good tempo, the club face rotates slightly open by its own acord due to the butterfly grip to promote that high soft flight. 

During your swing the body rotates back and, evenly more important, through!! during the forward swing, so that the club can return square at impact, while the feet and legs work with the body rotation through to the end of the swing.

Improve pitching and chipping without technique (The 3 Rs)

 Here are 3 strategy tips to save more shots around the green, now the time has come to go out and practise on fine tuning your short game. Be careful before investing time in improving your technique it is important to do the following first.

The first key is to understand the tactical and strategy side of the game first throughout your short game, as there is the chance to save many shots through this theme. Not knowing or understanding this will make the learning process in improving technique more difficult. Here I will show you 3 tactical and strategic tips that will dramatically improve your wedge game. 

Read

Assess the situation

We often see players looking at the target after they have addressed the ball, which obviously makes sense. But this is one of the main problems why players make poor decisions around the green Compared with the photos shown here, from the ball to the flag is a difficult high pitch shot to produce. But when we assess the situation more clearly there is actually a lot of room to work with resulting into a simple pitch shot to play.

Rehearse 

Wedge strategy 

The golden rule here is to land the ball as early as possible on the green due to having a target that is closer to you is easier to hit than a target further away 

Only golfers that have extremely good ball contact should allow the ball to fly further. Through good ball contact the ball will spin and roll out less towards the flag. 

When selecting the correct club it is important to access break and roll direction to locate the exact landing zone 

Now to the hole you must mentally prepare on rehearsing and concentrate on the right boreflight and length which is advantageous to playing the correct shot 

React 

The LIE of the ball 

Tour players use the 70% rule. This is where you should only attempt the shot to play when you are sure you can reproduce the shot 7 out of 10 times.

One important decision factor is the LIE of the ball. Here you can finally decide which shot is possible. Depending on how the ball lies, you can attempt a flop, lob or pitch shot or even by a bad lie be prepared to accept the consequences of the shot going beyond the flag.

There are 4 different lies that you may come across 

Bare  lie, no Lobshot possible try using a high lofted club with little bounce 

 

Good lie, A lob and pitch shot is possible only when you reproduce it 7 times out of 10.

 

Ball in deep grass, a lob shot is difficult to play. Try using a lofted club with a higher bounce 

Ball sitting up in rough, a lob shot is unwise in case you get too much underneath it and end up dropping it too short so try using a wedge with less lofted face.

TRUE GOLFING FACT - WHERE GOLFER LOSE MOST SHOTS

Research has proven that golfers lose almost 80 percent of their shots to par inside of 100 yards from the hole. To that end, our golf school curriculum focuses strictly on what I define as “The Scoring Game,” a combination of the short game (distance wedges, pitching, chipping, sand play) and putting, which comprise 60 to 65 percent of the total number of shots played per round. From three-foot putts to full wedge and long bunker shots, at this truly unique golf school, you’ll learn to properly execute shots from any scoring position.

If you have difficulty controlling distance when you face short shots, it may be because you find a small, delicate swing with a short backswing to be a more difficult swing to make than a long backswing. Research shows this to be true for any level of player. One problem with the short backswing is that there is not much time to get your body parts synchronised. It is the same feeling you may have over very short putts: You jab with the hands because you feel there is not enough time to get the flow and rhythm of the stroke.

THIS DRILL HELPED ME TURN PRO.

There was a time I used to feel long at the top of my backswing, disconnected and have very little synchronisation throughout my golf swing which led to the occasional stray shots. 

My mentor, @Davidleadbetter showed me this drill 

it was something he used to do with Nick faldo, one of my childhood golfing idols. This drill helped shorten and tighten up the swing and have everything working together as one in a synchronised fashion without any lose of distance, to be honest the strike was pure. ❤️👍

Place a towel behind your back and under your armpits. When you take your address position, the towel should feel slightly taut across your back when you attempt, making your practice swing you will feel that body and arms will work more together in a synchronised fashion. The swing will feel shorter and tighter while doing this.

Make sure the towel does not fall from underneath your arms at any point. 👊👏

Give it a try and be patient with it👊

VALHALLA GOLF CLUB No 14

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@golfzonleadbetter

@faldo006