Tip #51 - Developing A Sixth Sense In The Sand

Sand play was one of the last aspects of golf I took seriously. It was not until after I started playing the U.S. Tour regularly that I really began to work on my bunker game. Oh, I had a grasp of the basics, but I had no real finesse, no sharpness. I guess I was so cocky in those days that I figured I'd rarely have to dirty my spikes in the sand.

Boy, was I naive. After a couple of years of watching guys like Gary Player and Seve Ballesteros, I realized I'd never be a complete player -- or a consistent winner -- without a strong bunker game. So I worked on the refinements, using the bunker as my laboratory and experimenting with all sorts of nuances of stance and swing.

Once you have a feel for the basics, pursue some of the finer points of bunker play and adapt a technique that works for you.

I learned a couple of important things. First I saw that there is more room for artistry and creativity in a bunker than in any other part of the course. You have so many options, so many ways of playing a shot. And the more of these options you know, the more confident and aggressive you can be.

Second, I saw that bunker finesse is far easier to develop than putting feel or a soft touch around the green. Why? For that same reason Walter Hagen mentioned -- you don't have to hit the ball. The sand acts as a buffer, a margin for error. And therein is another source of confidence, another reason to play bunkers the only way they can be played -- aggressively. Until you can make firm, confident swings and actually try to sink that shot out of the sand, you won't be going at these shots with the proper attitude.

You should go through the same type of experience I did and feel out your own arsenal of shots. The best way to learn sand play is to teach yourself, by relating different setups and swings to the corresponding ball flights and rolls. In this way, you'll develop your own sixth sense in bunkers.

What you'll learn, more than anything else, is the way to vary the length and trajectory of your shots. There is a greater variety of opinion on this subject than on almost any aspect of golf instruction.

Some teachers and players advocate that to increase the length of a sand shot, you simply increase the length and force of the swing. Others say it's merely a matter of increasing or decreasing the distance you hit behind the ball. And still others key on ball position and weight distribution.

My own practice sessions have put me in the "vary the amount of sand" camp. I've spent hours hitting balls, thousands of sand shots -- and hundreds of those swinging with my left hand only, to get a feel for the way the club reacts with the bunker -- and I know that one thing is not arguable: the more sand you take behind the ball, the less backspin you'll apply, the lower the ball will fly and the longer it will run. Conversely, the less sand you take, the more backspin you'll apply, the higher the ball will fly and the faster it will stop.

There is another related law: The more open your sand wedge at impact, the less sand you'll explode and the more height and backspin you'll put on the shot; the less open the face, the more the club will dig down into the sand, and the less height and backspin you'll get.

Combining these two laws will help you to play virtually any shot you'll encounter. For instance, if you want maximum height and bite, the idea is to turn the clubface as open as possible and take as little sand as possible by hitting right next to the ball.

Indeed, if you can make impact so that just a few grains of sand intervene between your club and ball, you'll have the ultimate in friction and backspin. In a sense this is like hitting the ball with a sandpaper-faced club. It produces maximum backspin and bite. When you see me or other Tour players make the ball suck back from sand, this is what we've done -- played a wide open-faced shot and taken just a thin veil of sand with the ball.

Attacking with an open clubface produces a high shot with lots of backspin.

Looking at it another way, this is the reason that a ball always runs a long way when it's hit from a buried lie. When the ball is buried, you have to go down after it. To get down after it, you have to dig into the sand, which means a square face. Digging down deep means you'll be taking a lot of sand, which produces a low ball that runs a mile.

The suck-back shot and the buried lie are two extremes. More often, you encounter a situation that's somewhere in the middle, and naturally that calls for a compromise in your technique. Let's say, for example, that your ball is semi-buried but you don't have the luxury of hitting a hot-running explosion, because you're near the front lip of the trap and the pin is fairly close to you.

It was for situations such as this that I developed the stab shot -- an open face combined with a hard downward dig into the sand. The open face gives me the height and bite, the downward dig gets the bailout.

Other players have developed other solutions. Creative guys like Ballesteros and Chi Chi Rodriguez have dozens of different sand shots, but Jack Nicklaus played superbly for years with just two basic shots he called the explosion and the splash.

As I said, the best way to solve the mysteries of the sand is to take the basics with you into a bunker, learn how the physics of earthmoving affect ball flight, and develop the shots that fit the course you play most often, and fit your overall game.

Knowing the basics of sand play takes away your fear; knowing the subtleties will actually lead you to enjoy playing from bunkers. Once you have a feel for these things, you can pursue some of the finer points of bunker play, adapting your technique to different types of sands and the challenges of uneven lies.

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