Bunker Setup Mistakes And How To Fix Them

Below are the three most common errors that I see:

1. Not creating a wide low face: very often I’ll see players standing too narrow with a stance that does not include enough knee flex. What needs to happen in Bunker Play is the golf club needs to go down into the sand. If we are standing too tall, the golf club doesn’t have an ideal opportunity to get down into the sand which in turn is going to result in some thin shots.
   
   
2. In the address position, I see players trying to shift their weight onto their lead side because they’ve heard that this is a good thing and this is what you need to do to get the golf ball out. However, when placing their weight onto their lead side, you can see that their hips are moving towards the target and their upper body is moving away. So to rectify this, and this is probably my favourite exercise in the bunker to do, once you’re in your wide and low flex position as per the first error that we just discussed I want you to then put your lead hand on your lead leg so for the right-hand, put your left hand on your left leg, and then from there I want you to slide your hand down your leg until it fits onto your kneecap.
   
   
3. For the last one, players need to get the end of the golf club pointing more towards the centre of the body. Once we’ve got our wide flex stance, we’ve got our pressure on our lead leg by sliding our left hand down our body, we want the golf club to be pointing at our belt buckle. When you do so if we look at what would happen if the handle was leaning forward and now leaning back you can see that the back end of this golf club well it’s going to be exposed more than it was if the handle was leaning forward so by moving this handle back now the sole of the golf club is going to interact with that sand a lot better and it’s going to enable the golf club to come out.
   
   

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