50 Greatest Golf Tips by John Richardson

Author:John Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

18. Practice your bunker shots

During my challenge I had been playing my bunker shots very badly and reached an “enough!” state of mind. Conveniently, Blackwood had a practice bunker area at the end of the range so I decided to go up with my sand wedge and devote two hours of practice to getting better.

I bought a couple of buckets of balls, scattered them around the bunker, and spent the time getting better. No great secrets. No magic tips or epiphanies. I just committed to each shot and played around with hard and soft surfaces and the distance I hit behind the ball.

The next day I played a round of golf with my father. I ended up in a tough bunker, with no ability to see the flag, let alone the hole, which was several meters above. I laughed at the baptism of fire my new bunker technique was getting, but tried my best to focus on what I’d learned, and swung the club. The ball went into the hole. It was one of the most incredible examples of how a little work can make a huge difference. I can’t claim that I became the new Gary Player or Ernie Els after that but the practice made a lasting and quantifiable improvement to my bunker play, which continues to stand me in good stead.

Another trick I learned, this time from Gary Player, was to chip and pitch some balls along the beach. You cannot fail to get better at sand play with this technique and it falls into the powerful “play practice” category outlined in Tip 49.

Many golfers don’t take time to practice in bunkers—the practice bunker at Blackwood is so underused that grass regularly grows in it; but people regularly queue at the range to practice their driving. A classic example of 80/20 being applied the wrong way.

Would you like to know the fastest way to take several strokes off your game? Spend two hours in a bunker. Two hours is all it takes to raise yourself out of the fear-and-doubt group (about 90 percent of all golfers) to the point where you can play from sand with confidence.

In truth, bunker play isn’t that difficult. As Walter Hagen said, it’s the only shot where you don’t have to hit the ball. But the best way to learn is to teach yourself, by experimenting with varying ball positions, degrees of openness in your clubface and shaft, and lengths and paces of swing. Each combination of these elements moves the sand—and thus your ball—in a different way. In the course of a two-hour session you’ll arrive at an understanding of this bunker-play physics, and in the process you’ll discover how to play several different shots.

GREG NORMAN, Sharkwatch www.shark.com

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