Are you struggling with your bunker play? This was certainly the case for Golf Monthly editor Michael Harris. He was suffering with bad strikes and inconsistent distance control so we recruited top coach Fredrik Lindblom to help. In this video, Fred offers some really simple but effective techniques for escaping sand every time.
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00:00So one of the best things about my job is if my golf game gets into trouble I've got a little
00:06black book of contacts that iPhone get in touch with to help me out and I posted on social media
00:13recently I had a roundup at Formby Golf Club and I posted a couple of videos and Arcos screenshots
00:19and I posted the best and the worst bits of my game so it was a great drive found this really
00:25tough fairway and then there was a bunker shot where I hit it about there and ended up 45 degrees
00:33to the right so posted on social media I love to share my wins and a lot of fails there
00:39Frederick popped into my replies and said man we need to sort out your setup we're going to sort
00:45out your bunker game let's meet up at the PGA show week here we are PGA show week Frederick help me
00:52out yeah I think yeah they want to hit one or two but I've already seen kind of what you're doing
00:57which is a very common kind of pattern I see in many amateurs when they're in the bunker okay go
01:03ahead and hit one here see what happens let's start out with a hole very good but what you can see
01:12there in my opinion is that the club is moving a little bit too much underneath the ball luckily here
01:19the sand is not very fluffy it's kind of compact so you get away with it hitting it kind of far and
01:24deep behind the golf ball but if the sand is too fluffy that club is just going to work too much
01:29underneath it and if you're going to tend to hit a lot of shots yeah that happens yeah or you feel
01:35like you have to hit it so freaking hard you have to get it out of bunker right so what I see if you go
01:39to the side I'll show you kind of what I see which is very common that is a swing path that's way too
01:46far to the left and steep so a very common miss is obviously pretty much with all clubs of amateurs
01:53they swing out in kind of over the top yeah like a mad accident yeah exactly yeah pretty much T degree
01:58shopping woods yeah but so when you do that the club is going to tend to get a little bit too steep
02:04the leading edge and especially the hustle kind of leads into the ball so that's when you're checking
02:11yeah pipe on yeah so if you see really good golfers a lot of them I I was kind of filming with Luke
02:17Donald a couple of months ago he's pretty good he's pretty good at a bunker right yeah he he feels like
02:23it's much more kind of neutral into it it still feels like it's swinging slightly left but a lot less to
02:30the left okay so if you can feel like you're more kind of having more neutral plane swinging up a
02:34little bit too more to the right you're not gonna get as deep underneath the golf ball you're gonna
02:40be a little bit more shallow and you don't have to hit the ball so hard for it to go the whole way
02:45you see how much spin that has that's nice yeah it's because the ball is not and the club is not
02:50working too much underneath the golf ball so it's just a shallow divot you're gonna feel that little
02:55clip yeah and the ball is gonna stop right next to the pin so give it a go here okay and what I'm
03:01gonna do me so your face look really open yeah where'd you set it you set it out of dress you do
03:07it or do you set it no grip so I cannot I spin the club until the club is open I don't do this and
03:14then yes okay yeah yeah yeah so that's just gonna bring that puzzle even more absolutely yeah so we're
03:20gonna do this we don't want that we don't want that we want we're gonna put an alignment secure to
03:24mess with you a little bit okay we're gonna put the ball on the outside here so if you were to
03:29swing too much to the left there you're gonna hit the line I'm worried about hitting the alignments
03:33yeah and then we're also gonna put the right foot back a little bit okay it's further gonna help you
03:39to swing a little bit more into out okay the right foot is too open we're gonna tend to swing left
03:44right okay so I'd always been probably open the club you know get it into just open the club then open
03:50my style yeah I'm just bringing in a whole world of pain yeah yeah most often okay it most likely
03:56because the swing path though so if you can neutralize the swing path still feel like you really release
04:00the club like you actually did pretty good on that first one but would use a little bit more shallow
04:05so along the line of the stick along the line I'm worried about hitting the stick up yeah of course
04:09yeah so why not to there you go lovely open there lovely so move back the right foot a little bit
04:15it's gonna feel awkward yeah that way oh there you go close stance lovely just like that okay and
04:21now swing a little bit less hard okay a little bit softer along that line okay now it's all right
04:28so what happened there is that you bought them out a little bit too far behind okay so it's a little
04:32different feeling I mean a lot of things to think about yeah it shouldn't be too much back foot and
04:38then swing a little bit straighter try one more right so you we don't need to hit it so hard now
04:43the stance is it's a little bit too far up in the stance isn't it move a little bit more left yeah
04:47lovely right so we're just I would say like a ball inside the left heel it's good for you yeah and
04:54again straight through on the line yeah and softer beautiful stop way faster there nice still
05:03slightly too far behind so we're gonna do one more drill this is gonna be kind of your baseline but
05:09here we're gonna see exactly how skilled you are in the bunker here all right I want you to hit a
05:14shot here where you bottom out just on top of that line okay so we don't want to be behind it so give
05:20me three swings here where the divot is bottoming out just to the left of that line okay okay okay
05:25still too far back yeah so set up to that line again I'm gonna tell you exactly what you're doing so
05:34if you were to see yourself and I was reflecting right in front of you you have a little bit too
05:40much tilt in the shoulders and the head is way back behind the golf ball okay so what what happens
05:46is that you're pretty much setting up like you're about to hit a driver yeah and the driver will hit
05:50up on the ball which means that the low point is behind the golf ball too much right so instead so
05:56instead of setting up in this type of fashion we need to get the shoulders more level and the head a
06:03a little bit more right on top of the golf ball and the beauty in the bunker is that we don't really
06:07need to create that much power with the body so we can try to maintain the head over the golf ball
06:13throughout the whole motion so we can control you see what that started right on top of the line
06:18that way so set up to the line again imagine like the ball is right there so we want the shoulders to
06:25be more level so you can make the feel the left shoulder down you see what happened to the head
06:29yeah it brings it forward okay and now I want you to rotate around that around the head this
06:34is a lot of stuff to remember yeah okay okay rotate around there not much better now you started on
06:41top of the golf oh the line okay yeah okay so we're gonna give that a go here you don't need to hit it
06:46that hard we'll try it again now we're gonna hit a ball beautiful there so we're thinking about the
06:52shoulders still tilting a little bit too much there open up the face good and I feel like you're swinging a
06:58little bit more straighter and a little bit softer motion and bottoming out on the line beautiful shot
07:04look at the height and spin great shot and look at that not behind at all so to summarize okay so you
07:12were setting up you were swinging a little bit too much to the left yeah with the path and you were
07:17setting up like a driver yeah which means that you're gonna bottom up too far behind all the time
07:22because I think subconsciously I was thinking I need to get a bit of help to get it up in the air
07:26whereas I know really that I need to keep my weight on the on my left foot and you're gonna
07:32do that easier by just changing the tilt and the shoulder yeah so the lower the left shoulder is the
07:37easier this is to maintain the pressure left okay and then if you look at really good bunker players
07:42they have lever shoulders definitely more pressure left and then they just rotate around the head okay
07:48you don't see any pressure shift or slide sway you know they just go very rotational from that point
07:56so a little bit straighter path a little bit adjustment in the setup and you're gonna be golden
08:00that was a good shot you see the height difference yeah that went straight up in there great that's it
08:06everybody needs to see a bit of Frederick