Poor greenside bunker shots add more strokes to golf handicaps than probably any other shot. That’s because they intimidate many golfers—even those who’ve taken golf lessons on how to hit them. In fact, most golfers would rather hit from deep rough or a side hill lie than a greenside bunker. As soon as their ball lands in a greenside bunker, they mentally add two or three strokes to their scores. That’s no way to approach this shot.

Actually, bunker shots are easier to hit than most golfers think. They have a wider margin for error than many other shots if you use the right mechanics, according to one well-known golf guru. Dave Pelz, author of Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible, analyzed dozens of bunker shots in a recent study. The study shows that using the proper technique makes “sand play easier because it is more forgiving and minimizes the consequences of making normal human errors.” Nevertheless, golfers still fear greenside bunker shots.

Poor Mechanics A Key Reason
Poor mechanics are one reason most golfers hit bad bunkers shots. Even after taking golf lessons and/or reading golf tips on the subject, they still can’t hit a good bunker shot. The main problem, says Pelz, is that these golfers don’t understand how the club interacts with the sand on bunker shots. As a result, they hit poor bunker shots. Pelz is right. Watching dozens of students hitting hundreds of bad bunker shots during my golf instruction sessions has made me a believer.

Your setup, as you probably know, is one key to hitting good bunker shots. You can’t hit good bunker shots if you’re setup is poor. What’s a good setup? Your feet should be about shoulder width apart, with your knees slightly flexed, your upper body bent forward slightly from the hips, and your weight centered on the balls of your feet. The ball should be on-line with the inside edge of your front foot and the clubface wide open. Your stance should be pointing slightly left of target, if you’re right handed.

But understanding how the clubface interacts with the sand is just as important as your setup, if not more important. Many bunker players use what Pelz calls the “dig and push” method of hitting bunker shots. With this method the golfer aims the clubface square at the target, so the wedge enters the sand about an inch behind the ball. At impact, the clubface’s leading edge digs down two or three inches and, hopefully, pushes the ball out ahead of it. Unfortunately, this method has little margin for error. Plus, it requires a great deal of energy to execute. Under pressure, the method often breaks down.

The Scoot And Spin Approach
A better approach, Pelz says, is the “scoot and spin” method. (Actually, it’s probably better referred to as the “skim and spin” method.) This method uses the same setup as the dig and push method, except the clubface is wide open at address. Helped by the wedge’s bounce, the clubface skims under the sand and past the ball, blasting it out high, soft, and with spin. If hit correctly, the ball bounces once or twice, checks, rolls slightly to the right, and stops near the hole.

The scoot and spin method offers numerous advantages over the dig and push method. To start with, it’s easier and simpler to execute. All you need do is aim left of target, open the clubface, and play the ball forward on the inside edge of your left heel. Then take your normal wedge swing. Also, the method requires less energy to get the ball out of the sand and it provides a wider margin for error. More importantly, it doesn’t break down under pressure, so you’re less likely to flub the shot.

Don’t let greenside bunker shots intimidate you. Although they probably account for more strokes being added to golf handicaps than any other shot, they’re not as hard as they seem, if you understand how the clubface interacts with the sand. Switching from the dig and push method of hitting a greenside bunker shot to the scoot and spin method, along with taking golf lessons and reading golf tips on the subject, improves bunker play. Eventually, bunker shots won’t intimidate you.

In this issue we’ll discuss…

1) Stop Flubbing Chip Shots
2) Get Down For A Ball Below Your Feet
3) Drill of the Week #1 – Hardpan Lie
4) Article – Don’t Let Bunker Shots Cost You
5) Article – Get Your Swing On Plane Now

Jack’s Note: Did you ever think you could learn how to drop 8 – 10 strokes in the time it takes to watch a tv commercial? Watch this video and learn how you can groove your putting stroke in 30 seconds or less.

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1) Stop Flubbing Chip Shots

Flubbing a chip is also frustrating. Flubbed chips costs golfers more strokes than you can shake a stick at. Imagine being just off the green, with a chance to knock it home and save par, and you flub the chip shot. If that doesn’t get you down, nothing will. Sometimes, flubbed chips stem from a lack of concentration. Other times, they stem from mechanical error.

Below are the six keys to hitting a crisp, controlled chip shot:

1. Assume a narrow stance
2. Choke down on the club
3. Position the ball back
4. Shift your weight forward
5. Lean your shaft forward
6. Use a descending angle of attack

In a normal chipping stance, your feet are close together, the ball positioned just back of center, your weight shifted forward, and the shaft leaning forward toward the target. If you look down after taking your stance, you’ll see a “y” formed with your forearms. Make sure that the “y” exists in your address position and you’ll cut down dramatically on bad chips.

The key to this shot is not thinking about the “y” when swinging. If you do, you’ll hit the ball rather stiffly. Instead, try making this a finesse swing. In other words, try making your impact position as smooth and natural as possible without having to think about it.

To do that, check to make sure that the “y” is there when you start your swing and that it’s there after impact. If it’s there in both spots, it was there when you struck the ball.

Also, try not to lose the hinge in your wrists when starting your swing and when going forward. If you have difficulty doing this, chip with a “dead arms” motion. Use your body turn, not your arms, to move the wedge back and through the swing.

Eliminate flubbed chips from your game and you’ll save yourself not only some frustration, but also several strokes.
2) Get Down For A Ball Below Your Feet

A bad drive usually gets you into more trouble than you need. Sometimes, it lands in a clump of trees. Other times, it lands on the side of a hill, leaving you with a mid-iron approach shot to the green and the ball below your feet. If you’re not adept at hitting this type of shot, you could end up getting yourself deeper in trouble and tacking extra strokes on to your score.

Below are six tips on hitting a ball below your feet:

* Use a reverse choke
* Take a wider stance
* Add more flex to your body
* Adjust your aim to your club
* Maintain your posture
* Get down, down, down

While balance is an issue, the real problem is that the ball is farther away from you than normal. You need to make several adjustments to hit the ball solidly and get it back on the fairway:

* Use a reverse choke or a longer club with a shorter swing. With a reverse choke you grab the club all the way to the very end. Also, take a wider stance and add more flex to your lower body. This brings the ball closer to you.

* Adjust your aim based on the club. For a longer club, like a 5-iron, aim more left (about 15 yards). With a shorter club, like a sand wedge, aim less left (only a couple of yards).

* Maintain your posture through the swing. If you straighten up, you’ll hit the ball off the toe, pushing it right.

* Get down on the shot. Swing only 70 percent and don’t try to do too much. It’s a tricky shot.

Don’t let a ball below your feet hurt you. Make the adjustments described above and you’ll hit the ball solidly every time.
3) Drill of the Week #1 – Hardpan Lie

Readers kept asking us for more drills. In response we added something new to this week’s newsletter–the Drill of the Week. This segment will appear in alternate issues, replacing the Question of the Week. Next week we’ll field a question from our readers. We hope the drills help.

Chipping it close from a hardpan lie is a challenge. To do it right, you need loft not bounce, so you need to develop a motion almost like chopping with a lofted club. This drill helps develop that motion:

The Set Up
Use a sand wedge for the drill. Position the ball middle to back with your weight on your forward foot and your hands ahead of the ball.

The Drill:
Find a hardpan lie near a practice green (or elsewhere). Use the setup described above without the ball. Practice sticking the club in the ground, using a chopping like motion instead of a back and forth stroke. Without delay place a ball in position and hit it using the same motion. Try to hit the ball cleanly just below its equator while the club is still descending Repeat until you can hit clean shots. Don’t worry about distance yet. Get comfortable seeing the ball go low and feeling the club impact the ground. Then start focusing on distance.

If you’ve got a golf question you’d like answered, send an email to us at questions@howtobreak80.com and we’ll review it. I can’t guarantee that we’ll use it but if we do, we’ll make sure to include your name and where you’re from.
If you want to truly discover the secrets of shooting like the Pros and creating a more reliable and consistent swing, check out: http://www.HowToBreak80.com

Also, for past issues of this newsletter and some of my most recent articles, visit our blog at www.HowToBreak80.com/blog

To view this newsletter online, please visit:
http://www.howtobreak80.com/newsletter05262010.php

Here are some of my recent articles:

4) Article – Don’t Let Bunker Shots Cost You
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/dont-let-bunker-shots-cost-you.php

5) Article – Get Your Swing On Plane Now
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/get-your-swing-on-plane-now.php

Until next time,

Go Low!

Jack

P.S. Feel free to share this newsletter with family and friends. If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter, go to http://www.howtobreak80.com/newsletter.htm
About the Author

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How To Break 80 and Shoot Like the Pros!”. He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicaps quickly. His free weekly newsletter goes out to thousands of golfers worldwide and provides the latest golf tips, strategies, techniques and instruction on how to improve your golf game.

By Jack Moorehouse

Today’s professional golfers are better than ever. They’re also fitter than ever. Look at players like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. They’re in great shape. Annika Sorenstam also was in great shape when she played. Good players know that as their fitness level increases, their play improves—all things being equal. They also know that improvements in strength, flexibility, and endurance are often the difference in lowering your golf handicap two, three, or even four strokes.

Unfortunately, many weekend golfers can’t hit the gym as often as they’d like. They’re too pressed for time. If they’re not ferrying the kids around, they’re doing home improvement projects. Or, they’re completing a work report a colleague needed yesterday. These activities place a huge demand on their time, making it hard to find the time to exercise. But even if you’re short on time you can improve your strength, flexibility, and endurance with a little forethought and good planning.

Limber Up and Loosen Up
New golfers realize very quickly that the golf swing requires movements that they don’t normally make. Ingraining these motions is among the biggest problems weekend golfers face, especially if they have sedentary jobs. Golf lessons and golf tips don’t do much good if a golfer’s body isn’t pliable. Stretching is a good way to make you pliable. It doesn’t take a lot of time and it can be built into your daily routine. You can do simple stretches at work or before you start a round. The key is using the time you have wisely.

For example, if you’re taking a golf cart during your round, loosen your shoulders and back with this exercise: Stand next to the canopy post, your feet shoulder-width apart. Grab the post with both hands, keeping your arms fully extended. And pull away from the post. Hold that position for one long breadth, and then repeat facing the opposite direction. Do this exercise while your playing partners hit their drives. Stretch also while changing in the clubhouse as well.

Strength And Flexibility
To lower your golf handicap, it helps to improve both your strength and flexibility. Improving these two things can help greatly in your quest to go low. But you don’t have to start pumping iron for two or three hours a day to increase your strength. Instead, buy some basic fitness equipment to use at home. Then when you’re home, look for opportunities to use them, like between commercials of a basketball game or your favorite TV show.

For example, an inflatable stretch ball ($20 to $60 in most sporting goods stores) is a good low-tech piece of exercise equipment. The stretch ball provides you the added benefit of maintaining your balance while performing different exercises. Also, you can grab a five-pound dumbbell or whatever is handy, and do sit-ups using the ball. Extended your arms with the weight while doing the sit up. This exercise improves the strength and flexibility of your shoulders, arms, and abdomen.

Develop A Plan
If you’ve read my golf tips newsletter, you know I recommend using a pre-shot routine to insure consistency. Consistency should also be a key component of your fitness regimen. If you really want to start chopping strokes off your game, develop a fitness routine with help from either a trainer or your own research and stick to it religiously. It will work wonders for your game.

One final tip: Try to incorporate compound exercises in your program. They work on two or more parts of your body at the same time. Here’s an example of one: Lie flat on the floor, grab one arm, and pull it across your body. Now rotate your hips so your belly button is pointing in the opposite direction of the extended arm. Bend your legs at the same time so your knees are touching the ground. Hold this position without lifting your shoulders for several seconds. Relax and repeat. You can even do this exercise in bed before getting up.

The key to benefiting from any exercise program is consistency. But you must exercise regularly. If you can get to a health club, that’s great. Do it. If you can’t get to a club regularly, develop an exercise program that you can do at home when the opportunity occurs. It can be yoga, Pilates, or whatever, just as long as it focuses on increasing your strength and flexibility. The better shape you’re in, the easier it is to chop strokes off your golf handicap.

By Jack Moorehouse

If you’re serious about getting more yards from your drives—and shaving strokes from your golf handicap—work on launching the ball. It’s a golf tip not always covered in golf lessons. The higher you hit the ball, with the right amount of spin, the father it goes. Take Hank Kuehne. He’s among the PGA’s longest hitters. He uses a driver with nine degrees of loft. Most PGA players use seven or eight degrees. Weekend players couldn’t hit a driver with these lofts. For them, a good loft for a driver is 10.5 degrees or above.

Keep in mind that golf has no uniform equipment standards. So determining driver loft accurately is tricky. When measured the same way, most drivers come within a degree of the loft printed on the club. Driver loft performance stems from several factors. Only ball flight can tell you a club’s true dynamic loft—a function of measured loft, center of gravity, moment of inertia, and face roll. An adjustment to your stance and swing will helps generate more loft and more yards off the tee.

Below are four golf tips on generating more lofts:

Flare Your Forward Foot
In golf instruction sessions you’re taught to flare your left foot (right foot for left-handers) about 45 degrees on your drives. It’s a good golf tip. It increases the speed at which the hips unwind during the swing. Kuehne, however, turns his toes in. That’s because his hips unwind too quickly. Turning his toes in restricts hip movement during his downswing. Weekend golfers usually need to speed their hips up, so they need to flare the front foot. This in turn lets them swing the club faster.

Hit A Fade, Not A Draw
You may have told during a golf lessons to hit a draw off the tee. A draw often generates more yards because of the roll. But you can also hit a fade for distance. Jack Nicklaus did. Hitting a fade let’s you swing the club hard without having to worry about hooking it out of bounds. Weakening your grip helps when hitting a fade. To do that lay the thumb of your gloved hand on the shaft so that the thumb and forefinger points more toward your chin rather than your right shoulder (left shoulder for left-handed golfers.)

Sweep The Ball Off The Tee
The easiest way to get more distance off the tee is to change your angle of approach into the ball. In other words, hit up on the ball, not down. If you have an over-sized driver use longer tees. This gives you the optimum angle to launch the ball. For weekend golfers, optimum launch angle is anywhere from 10.5 to 14 degrees. To sweep the ball off the tee, set your spine angle at address so your front shoulder is higher than your back shoulder.

Pause At The Top
Pausing at the top is the last of the four golf tips. Start by taking the club all the way back. Then, pause at the top for a split second before committing to the downswing. Many weekend golfers get out of sync by making a sloppy transition to the downswing. Some golfers start their downswing before they’ve even completed their backswing. That’s not good. Also, if you pause at the top, you can swing as hard as you want on the downswing and still stay in rhythm.

To generate more power, golfers often try to swing the club harder than normal. That doesn’t always work. If you really want to get more distance off the tee, use loft to launch the ball. To help do that, flare your forward foot, sweep the ball off the tee, and pause at the top of your swing. Also, hitting a power fade can get you more distance, if hit correctly. Incorporating these golf tips into your swing will help you get more yards off the tee and, hopefully, help whittle down your golf handicap.