KJ Choi recently demonstrated a bizarre bunker drill he teaches to young players.
@PGATourChampions / IG
Bunker shots are just some of them the most demanding shots for recreational golfers. And most of these struggles come from lack of practice.
Finding a good place to practice bunker shots can be difficult. Most public courses do not have well-maintained short game practice areas where you can perfect the technique needed to hit sand shots correctly. As a result, the only bunker practice many golfers do is when they find one on the course.
This isn’t very effective if you want to become a proficient sand player. Shots from the bunker they require a technique that is not used anywhere else in the course, and learning the proper technique is done by trial and error. If you only shoot the bunker when you find sand in the round, you won’t be a very good bunker player.
Hitting a solid bunker shot requires using your hands and arms in a very specific way – and most golfers never learn how to feel them properly. Champions Tour pro KJ Choi has a solution to this, and it comes in the form of a strange-looking bunker drill.
Strange exercises in KJ Choi’s bunker
If your first reaction after watching Choi’s exercises was: – What the hell is he doing? you are not alone. You’ll usually see someone using the clubhead as a hammer after a bad shot in the bunker, rather than as a training drill.
While this drill may look strange, it provides some key benefits in terms of the feel needed to hit a bunker shot when performed correctly.
If you watch a video with sound, you’ll notice that the sound the clubhead makes when it hits the sand is very similar to the sound made when you hit a proper bunker shot. This is because the clubhead contacts the sand at a very similar angle in both cases.
“You hit the ground at exactly a 90-degree angle [at impact]– says Choi.
When you hit the club straight into the sand like a hammer, you are also forced to replicate the shaft angle of your bunker shot. When you hit a bunker shot correctly, your hands will be in line with the shaft and head of the club at impact. And if you do this exercise correctly, you need to create exactly the same angle.
“Some people have the wrong grip and the wrong angle,” Choi says. “Hands too [far] to the left. So we go into the bunker and get traction first and turn the angle down.”
If you can replicate the impact of the clubhead on the sand AND shank angle on a hammer drill when you hit bunker shots, you’ll soon be hitting better bunker shots than you ever thought possible. Try it.
