Downhill Sand / Bunker Shots
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Hitting sand shots is a scary thing for most golfers. As you'll see in the video, you need to make a few key changes to your setup on the downhill sand shot. Make sure you stay down through the shot and maintain your balance on the slope. It is important to trust that the loft on the club will send the ball up without you having to hit up on the ball.
- Downhill bunker shots are handled the same as any sand shot, with a couple added features
- Like any bunker shot, the ball should be a bit up in your stance
- Match your shoulder angle to the slope of the ground - this goes for either up or downhill
- Get a nice, wide stance with firm footing, match the slope and swing through
For most golfers, this downhill bunker shot is terrifying.
So many bad things can happen.
We can get the club entering the sand too soon.
We can get it to not enter the sand at all and blade it and launch it across the green, maybe into our playing partners, into the crowd, whatever.
It's a terrifying shot, but really it's super simple.
I'm going to remind you of the three keys to bunker play first.
Then I'm going to show you how to adjust some of those things to make the shot really, really easy for you.
Now, if you remember, there's three critical components to bunker play.
The first one, loft.
Loft is your friend.
Because you need to get the ball up in the air and you need to be able to swing aggressively.
Because the second key is you're going to move about a shoe's worth of sand.
Now, what do I mean by that?
I wear a size 11, take a size 11 shoe print, draw a couple of lines here.
That's about how much sand you're going to take out.
And if you're going to swing hard enough to move that much sand, think about it as a couple handfuls of sand.
It's got a lot of weight to it.
Well, what do you need third?
You need speed.
So you put these three things together.
You're going to take out a lot of sanks.
You're never going to hit the ball.
You need loft.
So if you're going to swing that hard to have the speed, then you better have some loft.
So the ball's going to not going to go very far.
So as you're practicing, you can draw these lines in the sand and work on taking out.
So you can see the club entered right there, exited right on the line.
That's a normal bunker shot.
That's how you know how to take the right amount of sand.
So when you're doing this in a downhill bunker shot, what adjustments do you need to make to make this shot work?
There's one critical adjustment that's going to make this shot really, really simple.
The biggest thing is your spine angle.
Now, you'll know that I've talked a lot about your spine.
I'm very protective of your spine.
And so when we talk about how we swing the club, we talk about how that spine's got to be set up and how it's got to rotate.
In the bunker, setup is everything.
We need to make sure that our spine is set close to perpendicular with that slope.
So you can see that the slope I'm on is about like this.
My spine needs to be about 90 degrees to that slope.
Where people make the mistake is they set up normally so their spine might be set up like this.
And now what that's going to do?
When you're on a downhill slope like this is, you're going to tend to hang back and enter the sand way behind that line.
Now, I know what you're thinking, in case you forgot this already, where does this line, this box all start?
Well, the middle of the box, about where the ball is going to be, the ball is going to be just behind the center of the box, or center of the line of the box, should be about off the left instep.
Now, you can play with this to start taking out a certain amount of sand that you want to take.
I like to take out very little sand.
I want to take a nice, clean, crisp divot because that's going to allow me to put the most spin on the ball.
But in this case, we need to make sure that our, the ball, excuse me, the line is about off the instep.
And once I'm set up there, I need to make sure that my spine is more or less perpendicular to the slope, which is going to make me feel pretty heavy on the left side.
That's normal.
If you feel kind of 50-50 on a downhill bunker shot, you're probably going to enter the sand too soon.
The club's either going to dig too much and the ball's not going to come out at all, or it's going to bounce out of the sand, catch the ball on the upswing, and just blade it a mile off the planet here.
So what we're going to do is we're going to take a couple practice swings with our box that we've drawn here.
And I'm going to work on getting my spine and getting comfortable with this feeling of having much more weight on my left side.
And now I'm just going to make a couple practice swings, with my spine feeling much more leaned toward the left, toward the target, and see where my divot starts and stops.
That was pretty good there.
I'm going to make, make sure my spine is leaned more toward this way.
Here, a nice little thump there.
Another thing that you'll feel, another way to think about this, is that your shoulders will more or less match the slope.
It's not going to be exact because obviously the right arm's a little bit lower, but that's a good way to think about it.
So after you've made a few practice swings, work on getting your spine, again, more toward, leaned toward the target, and make a nice little swing, ball comes out no problem.
So as you work on these shots, The big thing that you want to get comfortable with is your shoulders leaned, more or less matching the slope, your spine feeling more, lean toward the target, and then just make your normal bunker swing, and this will be a piece of cake.
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