Getting Yourself Up And Out Of The Sand

There are a good few people who play golf and dread hitting the ball in to the sand traps, it can often mean a number of dropped shots for some people since they struggle to get themselves out of the sand. There are golfers though that can take the occasional sand shot in their stride with many professionals able to hit the ball out of the sand better than most people do from the grass near to the hole.

There are a lot of tips people have for handling a sand shot and one of the key things to notice is that you are not necessarily hitting the ball, it is actually easier and a better percentage shot to hit the ball by getting your club deep in the sand and using the force of your club and the sand to lift the ball up and out of the bunker.

The best way to imagine it is to imagine a box about a foot wide with your ball in the centre of this box, you should be aiming when you take a shot for your club to enter the sand at the front of the box and to dig underneath your ball, this will cause a wave of sand and your club to �pop’ the ball into the air making it go upwards over the back wall of the bunker. This may require a large amount of power on deep bunkers but you need to be careful not to overdo it as you could over shoot the green and end up in the rough or worse, another bunker on the opposite side of the green!

This is mainly because most bunkers have high back walls that are touch to get your ball to fly over, hitting the ball normally may mean your ball hits the back wall and rolls back into the bunker and into a potentially worse place than you were in initially. As well as hitting the ball from underneath you need to make sure that your club face is open so that it allows for the greatest angle for launching your ball into the air.

Some golfers may be apprehensive about sending large plumes of sand into the air but if you see any professionals take a sand shot you will see they often send a big cloud of sand into the air and their shots will land cleanly on the green and in some cases can land in the hole.

Once you’ve hit your shot and hopefully made it safely out of the bunker in one shot then you will need to return the bunker back to how you found it, there is normally a rake near to bunkers that you should use to rake over any footprints or divots that your club may have made when you took your shot.

Initially you should just try to get yourself out of the sand and back on to the fairway or green, as you develop better control of your shot trajectory and spin control then you may be able to add spin to your sand shot so that when it lands on the green it rolls towards the hole for an easy putt.