Reading your Bunker Lie
When it comes to playing good bunker shots, it’s essential that you understand and “read” your lie in a bunker because the way your ball sits in a bunker will have a huge bearing on both how you play the shot and how the ball will come out of the bunker.
So the first thing you need to do is ask yourself, “How much sand do I need to remove?”
This is fundamental to how hard you swing when playing your shot so if there’s a lot of sand in the bunker, you will need to hit the shot harder whereas with less sand, you would hit the shot with less effort to cover the same distance. And if your ball is sitting down , then the ball will come out lower and running more whereas if your ball is sitting up relatively high on the sand, your ball will come out much higher and softer and with more spin.
So once you’ve decided how your ball will exit the bunker, all you then need to do is adjust your power to suit the length of the shot; hit harder for a longer shot and softer for a shorter shot but you MUST factor in both how the ball will exit the bunker and how much sand you will need to be throwing out of the bunker.
Best of luck!
(we apologise, it was a very windy day when we filmed and we struggled to minimise the wind noise in the video.)
