Long Bunker Shot

Normally when you’re in a greenside bunker, the routine is to open up your stance and clubface. Usually, you play the ball well forward, and swing the club outside and through to hit the ball a fairly short distance.

But what should you do if you’re 100 yards from the flag?

In that situation, I like to use my 8-iron instead of my sand wedge or pitching wedge. I open my stance and the face of the club only slightly, and I play the ball forward in my stance.

I try to make a rounded swing motion to ensure good contact and proper distance. It’s like making a cutting action across the ball. I try swing the club a little to the outside going back. Then I swing down and through the sand to the left. The ball should come out of the sand high and soft with this type of swing action.

It’s a great way to hit a bunker shot from 100 yards. You don’t always have to use your sand wedge or pitching wedge on a 100-yard shot. Experiment with your 8-iron or maybe even your
7-iron; you won’t believe what you can do with both clubs in the sand.

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Punch It Low

When you get yourself into trouble on the course, it’s important to get out of it on your next shot. Sometimes the only playing option you‘re left with is to hit a low punch shot. Here are a few tips to help you punch the ball out low and get it back into play.

Set-up

Use a club with less loft and choke down. Play the ball more in the center of your stance. Keep the center of your chest on top of the ball.

Backswing

Shorten your backswing. Swing back until your left arm is parallel to the ground and let your wrists cock.

Downswing to Impact

At impact you should have your spine on top of the ball. Your hands should be in front of the ball, yet the clubface remains square to the ball. A lot of golfers think “hands in front” means “clubface open.” But I want you to have your hands ahead and clubface looking down at the ball at impact.

Follow-through

Just after impact, your arms extend forward to finish about hip high. You don’t need to make a long follow-through because that will only cause you to hit the ball higher into the air. However, the overall speed of your swing will be a little quicker because your backswing and follow-through are shorter.

This punch shot technique will help you save a lot of shots on the course, especially if you‘re missing it into the trouble on either side of the fairway.

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Groove Your Chipping Stroke

Here’s one of my favorite chipping drills. Place one ball (on the target line) a few inches behind the ball that you want to chip. Tee up another ball and place it inside (and perpendicular to) the target line ball. Place a golf club on the target line out in front of you and another club on the target line behind you.

When getting into a good chipping position, we know that our weight should be turned to the left and our hands are forward of the ball at address. On the takeaway, we don’t want to hit the ball that is directly behind our clubhead, nor do we want to take our clubhead to the inside and knock the other ball off the tee.

What we need to do is hinge the club slightly going back to miss both balls and swing through feeling like our club always finishes pointing at the clubshaft on the ground in front of us.

Just remember, if you swing back too low or inside, you will hit one of the balls. If you swing through too far, the end of your club will not be pointing at the clubshaft on the ground.

This simple drill will give you a little feel for hinging the club and the proper direction the clubshaft should be point on the forward swing.

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Match Play Strategy

The key to match play success is understanding a couple of things. First of all, you should play the golf course. I know—everyone says that and yet it doesn’t really happen most of the time. In match play, I think you always need to know what part of the course your competitor is playing from. If they happen to block out their tee shot into the trees, then maybe it’s time to play a safer shot off the tee with a 3-wood instead of a driver.

Second, from an attitude standpoint, you always have to expect your competitor to do something that is very good. If you’re always saying to yourself that this person is going to mess up here and there, it can really drag you down. When they make that 40-footer for a par, you’re going to be devastated. You’ve got to be prepared and ready to play your own shots no matter what they do. The bottom line in match play is that you have to play to your own strengths—not what your competitor is doing.

You can even watch the mannerisms of your competitor to sense how they’re feeling. If your competitor starts getting nervous, it’s almost a sure thing that their routine is going to change. That may mean they’re on the verge of falling apart. They might even make less eye contact with you as they become more nervous.

I remember playing in many match play situations, even back in high school, where if I got off to a fairly stable start I thought that was very important and positive for me. It’s like I was setting the tone for the match. But, if things go bad early and you get a few holes down, do not get frustrated; you still have time to come back. You can’t get it all back on one hole, so don’t press it. You’ve got to take it one shot at a time as well as one hole at a time.

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Control Emotions, Gain More Yards

Let’s say you just finished the last hole with a double bogey and you’re mad at yourself. Or maybe you just made a mistake and missed a short putt. As you get to the next tee, you suddenly think to yourself, ”I’m going to kill my next tee shot.” That’s really the first mistake you have made.

You’ve got to step back and regroup because that hole is over. You’ve got to treat each hole as a mini-tournament in your mind. As you’re standing on the next tee, you really need to slow down. Take a few breaths and make a practice swing to calm yourself down. Or maybe the reverse is true. Maybe you're standing on the tee box of a par-5 hole and you really need to hit the ball 10 yards farther.

Mistakes can happen when you're emotionally upset or when you’re intentionally trying to hit the ball farther off the tee. Here are just a few of them:

* Gripping the club really tight.
* Standing farther away from the ball because it feels stronger to have your arms out and away from the body.
* Swinging the club back so fast that a backswing turn cannot be completed before the lower body runs away from the arms.
* Swinging your arms so fast that the body can’t support the swinging motion.

If you make any of these mistakes, the extra 10 yards that you’re trying to get can really turn into a very bad golf shot.

Here’s what I think you should do to get 10 more yards:

* Take a wider stance.
* Relax your arms; let them hang down.
* Make a bigger, but slower, waggle.
* Make sure your arms and body get fully turned going back. Jack Nicklaus used to say ”I'm going to grip it lighter and then I'm going to make a bigger turn.”

What’s going to happen if you make these changes? Everything in your swing should feel like it’s going forward together to apply the clubhead to the golf ball. Think about these things the next time you’re upset or looking to get 10 more yards.

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Long Iron Intimidation

I see this often on the golf course from the common golfer. I’ve even seen it from some of the best players that play the game. What I’m talking about is having to hit a long iron shot. That in itself is intimidating to most golfers and I think that intimidation factor creates some bad things. It creates tension in the arms, but I also see some real body motion problems, especially with the spine angle.

Pulling off the ball

Most golfers, when they have a long iron in their hands, think they need to make a bigger and longer backswing. But this thinking causes them to pull their body off the golf ball. They lose their spine angle, from which they can’t recover, and they end up hitting a bad golf shot.

Pulling up and out, spine angle straightens

Posture and spine angle maintained

Here’s another problem move that I see even more often. They set up well with a long iron in their hands, but tension and anxiety builds as they start looking at that narrow little blade. They swing the club back just fine, but swinging forward they pull up and out of the shot as they reach impact. As you can see (left image), my back end has pushed toward the ball and my spine angle has straightened up. That makes it very difficult to achieve a good impact condition.

Here’s what I want you to focus on when you're facing a long iron shot. When you’re getting into a good posture position, make sure you feel like your back end is out and up. Try to keep that feeling and position as you’re turning through the golf ball. If you can do that, you’ll get a nice sweeping motion with your arms going forward.

Keeping these thoughts in mind will help relieve the intimidation factor that you’re feeling with a long iron in your hands.

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