Dave: Welcome to golfishardtv.com, Gold Show for the rest of us. And we are going to talk about some concepts in the bunker and the equipment, mainly the sand wedge, there's only one piece for equipment, you really use out of the bunker, could use other clubs but we will get into that, but the sand wedge. And why is the sand wedge designed differently then some other clubs? And we actually got a question on this, we got an email, and the term that is used is called Bounce. The sand wedge is actually built to bounce.
Now what is bounce? And this is the simplest way to explain bounce, if I were to hold, if I were to address the ball with my sand wedge, it's the best way to illustrate, you can see the leading edge right here, leading edge is actually off the ground a bit and the back edge of the sand wedge which is here, it's tapered down. So this angle that's created, you can see it's a leading edge it's about a quarter inch off the ground, that's bounce. Now the more you open your face the more bounce there is, you can see now how high, that leading edge off the ground, that's about a good half inch, three quarters of inch off the ground.
Now you can afford to do that only when you are in a bunker or if you are in the rough and real talented players can pick it off a tight layout of the grass when they open the face, but you can see how it makes that much more difficult. Now sand wedges were built with bounce, so they would bounce through the sand and not dig into the sand. Now another important concept to understand, is that when you shut the face down, the opposite happens and you can see how now eventually the leading edge, is actually even with the ground which is away, every other club just about this built, most clubs don't have bounce.
If your ball is varied or you got a really long bunker shot, I would recommend shutting the face down because now it's going to dig right, down into the sand. So let's take a look at a situation, where you would want to close the face and dig, and that would be this shot when your ball plugs, into really soft sand. Now, if you think about - if I were to try to open that face, I am going to bounce right into that ball and probably the blade is going to stick right on here, under the lip of the bunker then, you are in really big trouble.
Now this is a situation where you just want to get it out. And one thing about this shot, it's not going to spend like a bunker shot, you got to plan for this to roll. Let's just get this out of the bunker. So I am kind of gearing up, for a pretty full, definitely a full swing with may be little extra force, typically I would open the face, this is a square face, in this case I am even going to hit it, a little bit or should turn it to the left, I am going to enter the sand somewhere here, I really just want to get that club digging down I am going to move all the sand and the ball will come out hopefully.
Now you can see ball came out of the bunker which from this lie, I was very happy. And let's take a close-up on this here, and you can see how much sand actually came out of that shot. And if you were to take a 16 ounce cup, you probably fill it twice believe it or not, with that sand. Because a normal shot fills up a 16 ounce cup once, that's how much sand you are moving in any given bunker shot, when it's average fluffy sand.
So there you go, I hope that explains bounce, why sand wedges were designed that way and how it will effect your shot.
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