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Lesson 9 - Bunkers (10-week golf improvement)

Lesson 9 – Bunkers (10-week golf improvement)

James Savage has reached lesson nine of his 10-week handicap mission with Scott Oxley at J Whitaker Golf. In the penultimate lesson, it's time to tackle bunker play
 

Happy New Year to all and I hope you managed to spend lots of time practising over the festive period to hit all those targets in 2015…

I have to be honest I struggled to get much practise in over Christmas. This was mainly due to family commitments and lots of snow in Yorkshire.

However, I was still able to work and thing about the things I had learned in the eight lessons with Scott so far.

Posture and balance are things I continually work on in front of the bathroom mirror. The pre-shot routine work in lesson eight is something which has really transformed my approach.

On of my problems previously was standing over a tee shot for a good 10 seconds going through about five or six swing thoughts.

Now I have learned to do all my thinking “outside the box” if you like and only approach the ball when I have gone through those thoughts to leave my mind free to hit the ball with a nice smooth swing.
When things start to go a bit wrong it is more important than ever that I step back go through some swing thoughts away from the ball” Despite not making it to the range much or out on to the course over the last couple of weeks we have started preparing for our year of club testing here at NCG.

Myself and editor Dan Murphy have been through club fittings with two manufacturers as we get ready for samples to be sent in for our monthly tests.

In Wednesday’s fitting session I was really happy with how I swung the club and was getting good results on the launch monitor. I went away feeling really happy and confident.

The following day we had a session with another manufacturer and I just couldn’t quite get it together. When I started hitting a few bad shots I very quickly slipped back into bad habits.

My pre-shot routine went out of the window and I found myself basically “ball bashing” in a desperate attempt to hit some bad shots.

I know that when things start to go a bit wrong it is more important than ever that I step back go through some swing thoughts away from the ball and go into the shot stress-free and relaxed.

On to lesson nine, I thought it was time to have a look at my bunker play. It is not an area where I feel I struggle too much but would like to get some pointers on how I can add some consistency to my set up but also learn more about different types of bunker shots.

Click on the video to see how I got on…

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