Hi, Robin here. Even to this day without much practice, I would rate myself as a pretty
good bunker player. I give credit to our own national team coach, Howard Bennett. He was
a great shot team coach and there was one drill he had us do on almost every time we
met and that was to practice with a 7 iron or a 9 iron out of the bunker.
The purpose of this drill is to give you more awareness of how to increase the loft of the
club and how to maximize the loft of the club through impact. It's a great drill for anybody
struggling with the soft high bunker shot. It's a very common shot particularly for good
players. When you miss the green, you tend to miss the green on the side in which the
pin's cut on. The pin's cut reasonably close to the edge of the green. You'll really need
to get the ball up in the air, have a little bit of spin on it and have the ball landing
soft to give yourself a chance of getting up and down. It's definitely a shot, which
if you're good at, can save you a few shots each time you play.
Now, I've chosen a 7 iron here. The purpose of this drill is to teach you how to increase
loft. If I was just to place this club behind the ball in the position I need to get this
ball to go up in the air and come down soft, you will see, I'll have to put the handle
of the club, the butt of the club very low. I'll have to twist the club face open. The
combination of twisting the club face open and placing the butt of the club in a very
low position. Now, I don't want the leading edge pointing too far to the right of the
target. So, the butt of the club will have to also come around to the right, it can't
be sort of parallel to the target line. It's got to come around to the right. And basically,
I've got to be in this position at impact to get the shot I want. So I need to take
my set up based around this position. To do that I'll have to get my stance wider, give
myself a chance of getting low. I'll have to flex my knees a lot more, giving myself
a chance to build my setup around this position of the club.
Very big stance, very low, because now I've got a chance of maintaining that loft through
to impact. Very key in bunker play is not to have the loft of the club reducing through
the shots. So, now to be able to maintain this loft, I'm going to have to learn not
to let my hands release over maybe perhaps like you would see in a fill shot. I've got
to maintain this loft by keeping my right wrist underneath my left wrist, my left wrist
going more into extension. You can see the loft of the club is maintained all the way
through impact even into the follow-through position. So if I can apply these rules, starting
from setup I should be able to hit a reasonably good bunker shot even though it's a 7 iron.
Now, do a little bit of practice with your 7 iron or 9 iron. See if you can get that
shot, that soft high bunker shot with that club. Because, if you can, when you switch
back to your sand wedge it's going to feel very, very easy. The thing is you learn to
do, getting the butt of the club low with the club faced slightly open, the shaft leaning
a little bit away from the target, positioning your setup around that, bigger stance, lower,
and then maintaining the loft of the club through the impact zone. Those are the mechanics
of hitting that high soft bunker shot. So, when you get your sand wedge out it's going
to feel very easy. We use the same mechanics but we don't have to exaggerate them anywhere
to the same level. So, let's give the sand wedge a try.
I'm going to open the club face slightly. This is nowhere near as much as I did with
my 7 iron. The butt of the club's going to be slightly away from the target. I'm a little
lower than a regular sand wedge shot, or even a regular bunker shot. Stance a little bit
bigger, nice and low. From here the key is maintaining the loft of the club through the
impact into the follow through, feeling that little bit of left wrist extension.
So it's a drill I give credit to why I became a good bunker player, why to this day I can
still hit that soft high bunker shot. I want you to give it a try. You might find it a
little bit difficult at the start. But, with a little bit of practice if you can learn
to hit your 7 iron or 9 iron with a nice high flight getting it to land soft, you're going
to find it so easy when you get your sand wedge back out again. Give it a try. Persist
with it. I think it's one of the best bunker drills out there.