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Just like with the finesse wedge swing, there are a couple of advantages to doing a right arm only swing for practice in the bunker. First, because the right arm is in a relatively weak position at the top of the swing, you will be more inclined to create speed by letting the club drop as opposed to yanking the club forward with the left arm.
Dropping the club and letting gravity help you speed up the downward movement helps to create a narrow swing arc. Second, because the right arm is further away from the target, having the effort their tends to help get the shaft more vertical (and use the bounce) as opposed to the amount of shaft lean that the left side would create. After you have a feeling of those 2 keys, add the left arm on at different places during the swing. The top of the swing and the follow through can be great check points for this. You can then see where your "normal bunker swing" (the one you are trying to improve upon) is different from your "right hand only bunker swing" and make adjustments until they feel similar.
Tags: Bunker, Follow Through, Backswing, Transition, Release, Drill, Intermediate
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This bunker drill is the right arm only bunker shots. So in the swing technique video we talked
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about how the bunker shot is very much right handed. I'm going to explain that a little bit more.
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What you'll tend to see with bunker players is when they go into their finished position it'll
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have speed but it'll come in more or less pretty narrow. If I did this with the full swing you
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can see that that would look like a very weak position. Usually if I'm controlling stuff with
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my left arm because it's so far this way as it comes down you're going to have that shaft lean.
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Right it wouldn't make sense for me to release this way if I was efficiently using the left side of my body.
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So good bunker players tend to have more of a look like so at impact where the left arm and
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left wrists are actually in a weak position. And I don't mean weak as in groups right like
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weak as in kind of the left wrist is collapsed a little bit that left arm may be starting to
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shorten positions that aren't conducive to transferring maximum energy. So practicing hitting
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bunker shots right handed and then putting your left hand on at positions will help you really
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feel two critical things. The most important thing it will help you feel is it's very hard from here
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to create a huge big body turn. And so you'll feel a little bit more like the right hand is
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initiating the downswing which is very very good for bunker shots. The second thing you'll feel
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is this kind of passive dropping action of the right hand as opposed to an active pulling down.
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The club gravity will almost help that arm start and then you'll speed it up once it's already going.
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So what you'll tend to see with these shots are actually I've had a number of students who
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we work on right hand bunker shots and they'll say well why do I even need to put the left hand on
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when I'm practicing or sorry when I'm playing and I say you know it helps stabilize things but
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many people can become very good at just hitting a right handed bunker shot and then if you can
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put your left arm to kind of help guide it you got kind of the engine that could for hitting good
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bunker shots. So we'll see if I can demonstrate a couple for you.
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Good so again nice little divot you'll see the the speed continuing and taking the club all the way up.
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So again just letting it drop. Good and making sure that we hit the sand
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which we'll get into in kind of the troubleshooting video. If you're not making contact with the sand
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there's only a couple things that you may be doing wrong. One last one right hand drop like so
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put the left hand on. So one of the big keys for learning the engine is practicing this right
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hand swing. You saw it doesn't take a whole massive amount of force the weight of the club because
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the same way just the heaviest club in my bag helps get the ball out you just have to get high enough
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so it kind of drops like a sledge hammer. So this will help you feel the engine. Make sure to practice
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this along with the setup video.
