This will probably
be the shortest chapter in the book. There's not that much to playing
out of bunkers. I will say this about bunker play however.
I'm sure you've heard pros say the sand shot is one of the easiest shots
in the game. And that would be true except that the courses and conditions
they play are usually quite different than the ones you and I encounter.
First off there is some consistency even between the courses they play
as far as the type and amount of sand in the bunkers; and there is a great
deal of consistency from bunker to bunker on a given course. I don't
know about you, but what I encounter on any given course ranges between
mud, or hardpan with about an inch of sand on top, to gravely sand (of
varying depths), to fluffy nice sand which may or may not be an acceptable
depth. (Sometimes all within the same bunker!) The drainage is usually
not that special creating different conditions within the same bunker,
and you're lucky if the course raked it, much less did a good job of raking
it, and even luckier if most of the players before you did any kind of
acceptable job in "cleaning up" after themselves. So I can do pretty well
out of sand which I can predict to some degree, but there are tons of bad
sand lies and many variable or bad conditions (some of them noted above,
I'm quite sure you can add to the list!) that the pros rarely face, which
do make bunkers something to fear.
Well enough about
the plight of the non pro versus the pro. Don't even get me started
on lost balls, or the mass of humanity which turns balls that would normally
be over the world into easy chip shots, or even putts in extreme cases.
Given that however, don't for one second think that the touring pro needs
these type of breaks to shoot the incredible scores on a consistent basis
on the toughest (if best maintained) courses in the world. It's just
that we need those type of breaks more than they do. They get them sometimes,
we don't.
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