Some Useful Golf Advice: Never Give Up in the Sand

Seeing your ball plunge into a bunker can be a bad feeling. Even if you draw a good lie, getting up and out of the bunker isn’t the easiest task in the world – if you get a bad lie, it can seem downright impossible. When you arrive at the bunker only to see your ball halfway buried under the sand, don’t despair. While it is a difficult shot, it is possible to chop the ball out of the bunker and even get it up onto the green.

The buried lie in a bunker is a frustrating situation to find yourself in, but don’t give up. Use the tips below to help guide your technique, and hopefully the ball will find its way back onto the grass in just one swing.

• Get steep. On a normal bunker shot, you want to bring the wedge in on a shallow angle of attack so that you can slice out the sand under the ball and get it to float softly up into the air. That isn’t going to work when the ball is buried. Instead, you need to come in from a steeper angle so that you are ‘chopping’ down on the ball. Use an open clubface to cut through the sand, and keep your weight on your lead foot to help achieve that downward angle.
• Swing hard. There is no way around it – you are going to need to swing hard to get the ball out of a buried lie in the bunker. You aren’t going to have a lot of control over the trajectory or spin of the shot, but that is okay. Your only goal is to get the ball out of the bunker and somewhere on the grass where you can play your next shot from. Make sure to keep your head down during this swing so you can get the club to enter the sand right behind the location of the ball.
• Choke down on the grip. If you swing with your grip up at the end of the club, you might find that you stick the clubhead into the sand a little bit too early. Choke down an inch or two on the grip so you have more control over the clubhead and can get it into the sand and just the right point.