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Perfect
light and a glistening powdery sand were all the ingredients Allsport
photographer Craig Jones needed to compose this study of
Nick Faldo's bunker technique. The man himself reveals the secret
to mastering
one of golf's most important rescue shots
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 The
secret's in playing
with an open clubface
Like many readers, I
was fascinated to study the photographs of Ben Hogan
that have appeared in previous issues of Golf International. I
was particularly interested in what Hogan had to say about cupping
the left
hand/wrist, and I long suspected this was his so-called 'secret'.
As Hogan
discovered, cupping the left wrist in the course of making the
backswing has the effect of opening the clubface, which in his
case worked as an effective antidote to his tendency to hook the
ball. I have always believed that it's better to play with a neutral-to-open
clubface. Through my own experiments, I have found that working
on this idea of cupping the left wrist (in fact, maximising the
hingeing of both wrists in the backswing) can help in a number
of situations, not least in the short game when you want to maintain
an open clubface to loft the ball, or play this basic splash shot
from a greenside bunker. In fact, any time you want to produce
a relatively soft strike and flight.
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Look for the 'cup' angle
When I practise these shots, my focus is on cultivating my wrist
action in the backswing to such an extent that as I crank the
right hand back on itself, I create a real 'cupping' as you can
see below.
Of course, a fundamental principle of any greenside splash shot
is that you open up the club face a few degrees before you finalise
your grip. But, as witnessed below
with the wrists encouraged to hinge freely on the backswing, the
clubface is opened up even more. The beauty then is that on the
way back down, you feel you can skim this open clubface through
the sand to produce a soft floating shot.
In fact, when you get the knack, the harder you swing, the shorter
and softer you can have the ball pop out.
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