I played golf with a lovely woman recently who confessed that she’s spent over two hundred hours in golf lessons trying to master the bunker shot – and she’s still failing. Such is her fear of sand shots ruining her scorecard that she’s now deliberately aiming away from greens to avoid the scenario of missing the putting surface and ending instead in a greenside trap.
When she lands in a bunker she has to take a penalty drop to get out. It was the destruction of her scorecard that day and it brought her to tears. She’s a very capable player with a fabulous long game tee to green and a lovely putting stroke, but bunkers have become the bain of her life.
(Image credit: Future)
She’s not alone. I hear the complaints almost every week. “I can’t get out of bunkers because I don’t have enough clubhead speed,” and the other common one: “I’m just not strong enough.” Even more typically women tell me: “I can’t get out because there’s no sand/not enough sand/the sand is too firm.” I ran these viewpoints past Golf Monthly’s women’s editor Alison Root who confessed that she too shares the same sentiments. “My bunker play is very hit and miss, sometimes I get out, other times I catch the ball thin and hit the lip.”
I’ve lost track of the countless times I’ve had to go back to basics to show my very own mum how to play a bunker shot and I always try to pass on my knowledge to as many golfers as possible during the recreational fun games we play.
One of the common misconceptions that they all hold, particularly those over the age of sixty, is that a lack of strength and speed is the root cause. So do we have a genetic disadvantage over our male counterparts or is it just a fallacy?
“It’s true that many women will struggle in the sand due to our slower swing speed,” explains GM Top 50 coach Katie Dawkins, “but more than this the root cause of their problems is usually poor wrist hinge (our hands, wrists and forearms are on average weaker than the men).
Katie Dawkins demonstrates wrist hinge
(Image credit: Future)
“The bunker shot requires a steeper angle of attack and some serious force to hit through the sand and under the ball in a typical splash bunker shot. Many women attack the ball on a shallower angle so tend to get little height out of the trap because they hit up on the shot. All that energy is taken from their swing before the clubhead has got to the ball”
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