Imagining yourself in a greenside bunker. Your ball is on a downslope, and the bunker has a lip that the ball needs to fly over in order to hit the green. Would you feel a little scared? If so, keep on reading!
In the following you will learn how to hit a downhill bunker shot that has a decent height in order for it to clear a bunker lip, or land and stop recently fast on the green. There are 3 important steps you must know in order to success with this shot.
The challenge with a downhill bunker shot that needs some height, is as following:
The first thing you have to do is to put yourself in the best position as possible before you start swinging. But what is the best strating-postion for a downhill greenside bunkershot? Here is what to do:
Below is a picture demonstrating the 5 above mentioned setup adjustments. The right picture demonstrates the opposite, but unfortunately very often seen setup for a downhill bunker shot.
Now that you have placed yourself in the correct setup position for the downhill bunkershot, its time to talk about what will need to happen during the swing. One very important element in the swing, is to keep the upper body tilt you established at setup. This mens keeping your weight a lot on the front foot, and trying to keep the lead shoulder (left shoulder for a right-handed player) low during the whole swing.
As you can see on the left pictures above, the weight is kept on the front foot, and the lead shoulder is keept down during the downswing. On the right pictures you will see what it looks like if the opposite is done. This is a disaster when hitting downhill bunker shots.
The last thing you need to change is more of a feeling than an actually major change. If you do the two above described things you´ve come a long way, but this final piece to the puzzle can be the game changer. Here is what you need to feel:
And below is how the opposite would look like. Weight going back, a wide arc in the downswing, and a narrow in the follow-through, almost trying to “lift” the ball in the air, which is a disaster.
You are now a downhill bunker shot master! But remember: This is a tricky shot to execute! You need to practice it before taking it to the course. I challenge you to use at least 4 x 15 minute of practice in the following month that comes. It might not seem as much, but I’ll bet that its 1 hour more of bunker practice than you otherwise would have done ;)
Place fell free to take 10 seconds to click on one of the share buttons bellow, so that other people can learn to master this tricky shot as well!
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