Bunker play: wet spring sand and what to do about it

Greenside bunkers frighten amateurs because they are taught as a special shot. They are not. They are a normal swing with three setup changes, and once those are automatic, a bunker becomes the easiest recovery in golf: it is the only shot where you do not have to hit the ball.

That last point is worth sitting with, because it explains everything else. In sand, the club never touches the ball. It enters the sand behind it, and a cushion of sand throws the ball out. The margin for error is therefore enormous compared with a chip off tight turf, where half an inch either way is a bladed shot or a chunk. Golfers who understand this stop trying to be precise and start trying to be consistent, which is a far easier task.

The three changes

1. Open the face before you take your grip. Not after. Lay the club open on the ground, then hold it. Opening the face after gripping simply twists your hands back to square during the swing. What you are exposing is the bounce, the rounded rear edge of the sole that lets the club skid through sand instead of digging into it. A sand wedge with 12 to 14 degrees of bounce is designed for exactly this and is useless if you present it with the leading edge down.
2. Dig your feet in and grip down. Your feet drop an inch into the sand, so your grip must shorten by the same inch or the club will reach the sand too early. Digging in also tells you what you are standing in: soft and deep, or firm and shallow, which changes how much sand the club will take.
3. Aim to enter the sand two inches behind the ball and keep the clubhead moving. Pick the entry point, not the ball, and look at it. The sand does the rest.

The mistake that causes most failures

Deceleration. Golfers make a big backswing, sense that it is too much, and slow down at the bottom. The bounce never engages, the leading edge digs, and the ball stays in the bunker. Then the next attempt is made with even more anxiety and the same result.

The fix is counterintuitive: a shorter backswing and full acceleration through the sand, finishing with the hands high. A three-quarter swing at full speed moves more sand than a full swing at half speed, and moving sand is the entire job.

Practice this by drawing a line in the sand and swinging so the club enters on the line, with no ball at all. Ten swings teaches more than fifty failed shots, because you can see exactly where the club entered and how long the divot was. A good sand divot is a shallow, dollar-bill-shaped scrape, not a crater.

Distance control

Length comes from how much sand you take and how fast you swing, not from the club alone. Two inches of entry with a three-quarter swing is a standard 15-yard shot for most players. For a longer one, take less sand and swing the same. For a shorter one, take more sand and swing the same.

Keep one variable fixed. Most golfers change both at once, get an unpredictable result, and conclude that bunkers are luck. They are not luck; they are two variables handled one at a time.

The second lever, once the first is reliable, is the club. The same swing with a lob wedge of 58 or 60 degrees flies shorter and higher than with a 54, which is how you handle a bunker with a high lip and very little green to work with.

Fairway bunkers are the opposite

Here you must hit the ball first, and everything changes. Grip down for control, play the ball slightly back of centre, keep the lower body quiet so you do not slide and hit behind it, and take one more club than the yardage suggests because you are making a shorter, more controlled swing.

Then check the lip, and be honest about it. If you cannot clear the lip with the club the distance requires, the distance is irrelevant: take the club that clears it and accept a longer next shot. More big numbers come from a 5-iron clipping a bunker face than from any other single decision in amateur golf.

Buried lies

A plugged ball needs the opposite setup from a clean one. Square the face or even close it slightly, play the ball back, hit down hard behind it, and expect no spin at all. The ball comes out low and runs, so aim for the front of the green and accept two putts.

Trying to float a plugged ball with an open face is how a bogey becomes a seven. Accept that the shot is a recovery, not an approach.

Rake it, and know the rule that changed

Under the current Rules of Golf you may remove loose impediments in a bunker and you may ground your club outside the bunker, but you still may not touch the sand in the area immediately behind or in front of the ball, or make a practice swing that touches sand. If your lie is genuinely unplayable, the two-stroke option to drop outside the bunker on the back line is often cheaper than a third attempt at a shot you cannot execute.

Then rake, and rake properly, pulling sand towards the low side and entering and leaving at the lowest point. The Golf Canada publishes the rules in full and the Golf Canada app answers most on-course questions in under a minute.

Where to practice sand in Canada

The honest problem is access: a great many public facilities have a practice green but no practice bunker, and the ones that do often keep it locked or unraked. Before buying a bucket anywhere, ask at the counter whether the short-game area includes sand and whether it is open, because that single question decides where your short-game practice happens for the year.

Municipal and public facilities with a full practice complex are the best value in Canadian golf for this, and twilight practice fees are usually a few dollars. If your club has a practice bunker, use it in the first hour after the greens crew has raked it, when the sand depth is even and what you learn transfers.

Failing that, a PGA professional’s short-game lesson in a real bunker is worth more than any amount of range time on this shot specifically, and most facilities that run group clinics include a sand session. Golf Town and Golf Town can check the bounce and grind on your wedge if the club feels like it digs no matter what you do, which is a real equipment cause and not a technique fault. Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any of them and earns no commission.

The practice that pays

• Ten swings on a line with no ball, every time you practice. Look at the divot, not the ball.
• Ten shots to a target at 15 yards with a fixed swing length, changing only the amount of sand.
• Five fairway bunker shots with a mid iron, focusing on ball-first contact and on clearing the lip.
• One buried lie, deliberately, so the first one you see on a course is not the first one you have played.

Twenty minutes a week turns the shot most amateurs fear into the one they least mind facing, and it is the only part of the game where the technique is easier than the reputation.

Where this shows up on a course

Three courses from our directory known for their sand.

• Dundarave Golf Course: A Hurdzan and Fry course opened in 1999 to show off Prince Edward Island’s red sandstone: 7,089 yards and 120 bunkers filled with red sand you do not read as sand.
• Niakwa Country Club: Stanley Thompson on the Seine floodplain in Winnipeg since 1923, bunkers rebuilt by Doug Carrick: the Horn, and the hardest par 72 in the city.
• Cataraqui Golf and Country Club: Stanley Thompson at Kingston, restored by Doug Carrick: finger bunkering, fast subtle greens, and a top-hundred course in a city nobody plans a golf trip around.

We have not played these courses; each page says what it is based on.