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As if bunker shots aren't difficult enough, sometimes you encounter a situation where the ball doesn't lie on perfectly flat sand.
Negotiating uphill and downhill lies
One of the most intimidating and difficult bunker shots you encounter occurs when you find your ball halfway up the face of the bunker or halfway down the back of a bunker.
If you think logically about an uphill or downhill lie in a bunker, you understand that
- When you have an uphill lie, the ball comes out higher.
- When you have a downhill lie, the ball comes out lower.
 | So, what to do about it? When you have an uneven level, you must adjust your shoulders, at address, to mimic the slope of the hill: |
- Uphill shot: Your shoulders need to tilt until they rest parallel to the ground. If you don't make your shoulders level to the hill, your swing smashes into the hill. You also make it difficult to get through the hill into your big followthrough; you end up with the clubhead stopping and a ball that can't go anywhere. You don't want the club getting caught in the sand because you swing right smack into the hill.The clubface should square, not open, because the incline already adds loft.
- Downhill shot: Your shoulders need to tilt again, this time so they mirror the downhill slope of the bunker. Tilting back on a downhill bunker shot causes you to bury the club in the sand too far behind the ball or top the ball. The angle becomes unnaturally severe and inappropriate. Keep your weight on your front side and swing the club vertically.
If you tilt your shoulders to match the hill, you make plenty of room for your swing. Tilting for the downhill or the uphill lie naturally allows you to swing normally, splash through the sand, and rotate into your finish because you swing with the slope of the hill. Simple physics, we suppose, but you don't need a physics course to improve your sand game.
Cooking the fried egg
A ball that lands in soft sand and buries itself gives you what's called a fried egg lie, because the ball lies in the middle of a round depression in the sand with only the top of the ball visible. The ball looks like the yoke and the circle of sand the white part of a sunny-side-up fried egg.
What you have is a challenging shot. But if you make adjustments to your standard sand swing, you come out okay:
- Dig in deeper: If you find your ball buried in a fried egg lie, the ball usually rests an inch or two below the surface of the bunker. Therefore, the first thing you need to do to play it successfully is to dig your stance in even lower so that you can start from a lower point. You still want the clubhead to splash below the ball, but the ball is even lower than normal. So, if the ball is two inches lower, you have to get two inches lower as well, which is tougher than you may think. Get in as deep as you can and get set.
- Get the club lower: You can get the club lower into the sand if you allow the leading edge to dig more. Close the clubface up a little at address and de-loft it to make the club dig easier.
- Swing faster: To play the buried lie, the club has to go into the sand two inches lower, and you have to splash much more sand, so the club slows down much faster. You also have to deal with more shock on your hands. In this case, you need to use a speedier swing. Not a harder swing, just a faster one. Instead of powering up, increase your club speed so that you can keep the club moving.
Sure, many a golf expert will stress the advantages of not messing with the speed of your swing. But the fried egg is an extreme lie, and extreme lies call for extreme measures. Swinging faster than normal is an extreme measure and hopefully you won't frequently find yourself with fried-egg lies.
- Pick a closer target: The ball has no backspin when it comes out because of the buried lie. It comes out like a knuckleball and turns over. Try to hit it a couple of feet shorter — this shot rolls more than a typical bunker shot and has over-spin because so much sand rests between the clubface and the ball.
Your best bet is to close the clubface a little and get that ball out — anywhere out — and onto the green. Don't think too much about the buried lie. Experimenting and practice help your confidence immensely.
Facing steep situations
You may stumble upon occasions when you find your ball up against a severely steep sod face or lying under an extremely high, looming lip. You may stand over your ball and look up at the wall of the bunker or the lip and think, "I can't get this ball up fast enough to get it over that lip and land the green." If that thought enters your mind, you're almost always right! You probably have such a bad lie that the ball can't physically come off the club at a sharp enough launch angle to allow it to clear the face of the bunker or the lip.
What are your options? Check out the following pointers:
- In the face of overwhelming odds, you may want to take a swing at the ball anyway, which can lead to terrible repercussions: The ball could hit the lip or wall and fall back into the bunker in the same spot or in an even worse position; you could plug the ball into the face of the bunker or the lip; or, even worse (and this happened to Jeff Maggert in the Masters Tournament), the ball could bounce back off the wall or lip and hit you, putting you in danger and causing you to incur a two-stroke penalty.
- You can declare the ball unplayable, take a one-stroke penalty, and drop the ball within two club-lengths of where it lies but no nearer to the hole. The downside of this option is that the ball must remain in the bunker.
- Perhaps the least desirable but wisest option is to play the ball out of the bunker — backwards. Play the ball out of the bunker at the easiest point of escape, and then play it to the green with your next shot. Such defeatism is against the nature of every golfer; you don't want to hit the ball backwards up a fairway or away from the hole, but sometimes you have to take your medicine and go the smartest, safest route.
If you decide to give it a go in the face of the odds, open your clubface as much as you can, take a very vertical, upright back swing, and then let your lead hand take the clubhead through the sand. Try to ignore the result so that you can swing the clubhead all the way through to a big, full finish.
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