The Sand Trap .com

When you execute a proper bunker shot, your club doesn’t even make contact with the ball. Take your mind off of the ball by hitting small plastic toys, a tee, a used cleat, a mowed half-ball, your keys, or anything else you can think of. It’s fun and it gets your mind off of hitting the ball: you want to slide the club through the sand.

When you get good, borrow your friend’s Rolex and hit that out of the bunker, too, landing it just in the fringe. You may want to wrap it in a plastic baggie to keep the sand off of it, but then again, it is your friend’s watch, not your own. 🙂

There are times out on the golf course when you find yourself “between clubs”; that is, at an awkward distance from the flag. You may find that you are slightly too far away for a full 8-iron, but slightly too close for a full 7-iron.

You should resist the temptation to hit the shorter club slightly harder. This will most likely result in an out-of-control swing, a poor ball strike, and ultimately a wayward shot. Another common mistake is to take the longer club and try to swing slower. This can cause an awkward, tentative swing, which increases the chances of catching the ball “fat” or “thin”.

Instead, opt for the longer club, but grip down the shaft about ½ inch to an inch, and take your normal swing. Gripping slightly further down effectively decreases the length of the shaft, which takes those extra 5 yards of your ball flight. Remember to maintain a positive strike, and resist the temptation to swing harder or softer than normal.

You’re often taught to swing the club, not to hit the ball. However, there are sometimes occasions in which you do want to do something more than swing smoothly.

When playing out of the sand, many people envision sliding the club through the sand. Some envision spanking the sand, or pulling the heel of the sand wedge down into the sand.

When playing from deep rough, a “hit” is certainly required to wrench the ball from the tall grass. When playing a knockdown shot underneath a canopy of trees, many times you’ll want to “punch” the ball.

Golf, strangely enough, can sometimes be a game of vocabulary as we make associations between verbs and the actions required to pull them off. Who know a dictionary and a thesaurus could lead to lower scores?

The course on which I grew up had a difficult par three – bunkers and mounds left, right, and long, a rather significant ridge in the green, and tight pin placements. The yardage? 227. Needless to say, this wasn’t ranked a bit higher than the 15th toughest hole on the course.

At the time, I’d typically hit a 5W, 3W, or a 2I to the green. I’d usually be short, and I’d usually be in some trouble in a bunker, on a mound, or more. Until I decided to play the hole with a regular old 4I. There was no trouble short, and I could pitch the ball relatively close. I parred the hole half the time and bogeyed the other half. I almost never got up and down when going for the green, so my scoring average on the hole dropped when I played it almost as a very short par four.

Golf is a game of scoring, and sometimes the path to the lowest score involves a bit of creativity in how you play those holes that seem to have your number.