One of the greatest things about practicing bunker shots is you can draw some lines in the sand and you’ve got evidence to see what you did or didn’t do. I’ve drawn a couple lines here. I’m going to call this the center line. It’s about three to five inches behind the ball, and that’s going to be in the center of my stance. And I’d like to just set up with a club right over that line. I’ve drawn another line ahead of the ball, and I’ll show you some things with the swing on that.

In terms of the setup, there’s three real changes in the bunker. The obvious one is the ball’s more forward in this stance because we’re going to use the sand to get the ball out. Also, because of the rules of golf, I want you to put a little bend in your elbows and then practice. You can just let the club head go down there and put a little bend in your elbows. And when you do that, then the ball gets opposite the toe of the club. So those are three changes.

Now I’m going to show you the common mistake that people make trying to get the ball up out of the sand.

There’s a lot of bad advice that gets told, especially to new golfers, and that is that during a golf swing, they should keep their left arm straight. Generally, they interpret that as being straight like this, and the left elbow gets locked out, and that is some bad advice. Please don’t give it, and if you hear it, please ignore it. In the golf swing, during the back swing especially, the lead arm or left arm for a right hander does get extended, but you don’t want to lock that left elbow out. If you lock that left elbow out, it’s going to reduce the size of your back swing, you’re going to have tension in muscles, and when you get into the ball area, it tends to make the club go face up, which is going to give you a slice.