Dave Pelz is one of the great short game instructors in the world.
His book The Dave Pelz Short Game Bible will take shots off your score. If you haven’t read it, you need to. Better still, own it and refer to it often.
And the short game is once again in the limelight this week at the RSM Classic at the Harbour Town Golf Links.
Harbour Town is a classic Pete Dye design and he brought in a young pro named Jack Nicklaus to help out and launched Nicklaus on what would become a distinguished design career.
One feature of Harbour Town are the small green complexes, which puts a premium on the short game.
One design feature Dye used at Harbour Town are wooden bulkheads on many of the greenside bunkers. Get too close to them and you’d best be careful.
Today, we have Dave Pelz to give some tips on bunker shots and how you can practice them in your backyard.
Click on this link for Dave’s bunker tips:
When you need to get a bunker shot up quickly, you might want to take Dave’s advice and use a lob, or 60-degree wedge, especially if it’s a shorter length shot. Otherwise, you can do a lot with your standard sand wedge, simply by opening the face.
Take a look at your sand wedge or lob wedge and you will see it has a flange on the back. The idea is to let that flange glide through the sand to lift your ball up and out of the sand.
This comes in handy when you’re near the face of a bunker.
It will come in handy if you ever travel to Scotland and find yourself in one of those steep-face rivetted bunkers that are a key feature on links courses.
Just to review what Dave spoke about:
Open the face and set up with more weight on your left side. Hinge the club up quickly and imagine you’re taking out some sand the size of a dollar bill.
Most of all — practice and practice some more!
