Bunker issues on home course

[~QQ~]

Half of the bunkers on my home course have very little sand while the other half has plenty of sand.

So I have 2 problems. The first is that it hard to tell what the sand level is until after I've hit my shot. The bunkers with very little sand will result in my club skipping off the bottom of the bunker and thinning the ball. So how can you tell if the sand is there or not for a normal bunker shot? I wish I could dig my finger in to see where the bottom is.

The second issue is how do you hit a shot with a half inch of sand beneath your ball? Pick it clean? What's that technique?

 

[Daddio]

Only way I know to tell for sure is digging your feet in. We went through this about a week ago at my home course when they were adding sand to our bunkers. We have a lot of bunker 'complexes' made up of several smaller individual bunkers close to each other. They dump trucked large loads of soft sand into whatever bunker they could get to easiest and that would damage the course the least. I think the ultimate strategy was to distribute that sand amongst the nearby bunkers using smaller equipment, at least I hope so. I lost 2 balls in bunkers that day. Once I was only 15 feet from a buddy who was in a different trap who asked advice on how I'd play his shot, basically bare concrete that had to get up quickly and somehow stop on a downhill sloping green. My advice was to offer to trade shots (if he could somehow find my ball (however deep it was buried). Hit 11 bunkers on the day, (my bad there), but only had 2 reasonable lies and shot 101. First time I've been north of 100 in the 1000+ rounds since returning to golf 10+ years ago.

 

[lockstockrye]

Half of the bunkers on my home course have very little sand while the other half has plenty of sand.

So I have 2 problems. The first is that it hard to tell what the sand level is until after I've hit my shot. The bunkers with very little sand will result in my club skipping off the bottom of the bunker and thinning the ball. So how can you tell if the sand is there or not for a normal bunker shot? I wish I could dig my finger in to see where the bottom is.

The second issue is how do you hit a shot with a half inch of sand beneath your ball? Pick it clean? What's that technique?

Are you asking this so as to be within the rules? Or just in general?

I mean, you do get to dig/rotate your feet to get a footing. That should tell you if there is sand or not. And if this is about the rule, you can always go to another bunker and take practice swings.

As for how to hit the bunker shot with lots of sand....you basically are slapping the sand. Whatever gets you to get that image - do that. The execution can occur different ways depending on what suits. But one way to practice to get the feel is to do an exaggerated clockwise whirly bird with the head/club. (if that make sense). You are using the sand to shoot the ball out...so you need to 'slap' it before the ball.

 

[~QQ~]

Are you asking this so as to be within the rules? Or just in general?

I mean, you do get to dig/rotate your feet to get a footing. That should tell you if there is sand or not. And if this is about the rule, you can always go to another bunker and take practice swings.

As for how to hit the bunker shot with lots of sand....you basically are slapping the sand. Whatever gets you to get that image - do that. The execution can occur different ways depending on what suits. But one way to practice to get the feel is to do an exaggerated clockwise whirly bird with the head/club. (if that make sense). You are using the sand to shoot the ball out...so you need to 'slap' it before the ball.

Looking for how to hit a bunker shot with very little sand. I've got the other way down.

 

[TxAggie2018]

Most bunkers around San Diego do run on the thin side. What's your home course?

For me, I can usually tell how deep a bunker's sand will be when I walk into it. And this probably isn't the tournament legal answer, but I'll sometimes plumb the sand with my wedge head like it's a walking stick. You can find the bottom that way pretty easily. Again, not tournament stuff, but these bunkers are far from tournament conditions, so screw 'em.

For dead-bare lies, I just try to pick the ball like it's on grass. It'll usually come out low, but with a 60*, I still get enough elevation to get over bunker lips. Once there's even a skiff of sand (1/2" would be plenty), that sand starts "grabbing" a lot more, and I have to go to the splash technique. When in doubt, I will try and splash my ball out.

 

[bkuehn1952]

No lip and firm thin sand, consider putting. Practice it a few times before “going live.”

If the lip is not too high, consider chipping. Again, some practice is needed. Also, neither putting nor chipping is especially effective if short sided.

 

[JohnSinVA]

Half of the bunkers on my home course have very little sand while the other half has plenty of sand.

So I have 2 problems. The first is that it hard to tell what the sand level is until after I've hit my shot. The bunkers with very little sand will result in my club skipping off the bottom of the bunker and thinning the ball. So how can you tell if the sand is there or not for a normal bunker shot? I wish I could dig my finger in to see where the bottom is.

The second issue is how do you hit a shot with a half inch of sand beneath your ball? Pick it clean? What's that technique?

Whenever courses in my area are doing bunker work they establish a local rule making them GUR with drop at nearest point of relief.

 

[blugold]

Dig your feet in. The firmer the same, the squarer the leading edge needs to be and less sand interaction needs to happen. If it's hard enough, treat it as a normal swing with ball first contact.

 

[dAS0]

firm/lack of sand would be a cleaner shot with more of an open face for me. Use the bounce to skip across the surface. It is more of a tight lie shot than a bunker shot at that point.

 

[lockstockrye]

Looking for how to hit a bunker shot with very little sand. I've got the other way down.

Ahh...little sand: You gotta pick it pretty good and need a wedge with a low bounce. In AZ, a 4 degree does the trick on the 'no-sand-bunkers'. But, also weight forward and gotta stay low the whole way through. In this case, the bounce of the club is the enemy...because if that thing comes up...it's skullsville.

The way I learned for AZ bunkers is a counterclockwise 'slice' under the ball - that's my image btw. Yours may be different.

 

[OldeDude]

As many have said, you can dig your feet in to see how much sand there is. As for shots with very little sand, I've found that the best bet is a low-bounce 60* wedge and take a somewhat normal bunker shot. If you don't have a low-bounce wedge, I'd still open the face, still hit behind the ball, but closer than normal, and come at it really steep with a bit more clubhead speed. You'll either hit a really good shot, or rocket one either into the lip or across the green (with practice the good shots happen a lot more often).

 

[WLG1952]

On low, or very little sand lies, I pick the ball clean off the surface. I also grip down on the club for better club head control.

For a decent amount of sand, it's just a normal sand shot.

As mentioned before, digging my feet into the sand tells me all I need to knew about the quantity of sand, and which swing/club to use.

On another note, at a meeting the other night, it was brought up how bad of shape our bunkers are in. We have weeds growing in some of them. The course rep told us he would work on it, but we needed to understand that the price of sand has quadrupled in last couple of months. Hence the reason for the weeds.

I made the remark that the high price of sand was kind of funny, since we have acres, acres of blow sand all around us. His reply was it was the type of sand.