Improve your Forward Swing Pivot

We talk all the time about improving someone’s forward swing pivot. Did I have a favorite drill they could do on their own to improve their forward swing pivot. Here is a wonderful drill that is a favorite of mine and you can do on your own at your golf course or practice facility.

Find yourself a bunker around your practice facility.

Draw a line in the sand with your club a few feet long.

Place your left foot just to the left of the line approximately where the ball would sit. The line should be in line with the logo on your golf shirt if you are a right handed player. Now make your stance. The drill is to take golf swings and make the club hit the sand in front of or the target side of the line.
If you are an individual; that either uses too much arms, hands or tilts you will find your first swings either miss the sand completely or hit way behind the line. I do this frequently with students and film them doing this drill. It is quite amazing how much better their pivot and impact gets during the drill and how much easier they can feel the correct motion after doing the bunker drill.
As you get better at doing this you will find that the only way to move the low point up in front of the line is to make a better pivot motion and to get your trunk more on top of the ball at impact. This has your body or trunk moving forward rather than tilted up and back which is what happens most of the time when you have a poor forward swing pivot and swing the club too much with your arms.
Try my favorite pivot drill and see if you don’t start hitting better golf shots.

How to Hit Long Bunker Shots

At the Dewsweepers Golf School and on the Dewsweepersgolfshow.com website this topic recently came in.
“I am a pretty good bunker player when it comes to green side bunkers but really struggle with 40-50 yard bunker shots. My course also has waste areas that run along the fairways any suggestions how to play out of the waste areas in the 40 to 50 yard range”
My suggestion is that if you are a good green side bunker player that you adopt the same technique for the 40-50 yard bunker shot as well as the shot from the waste area. One of the problems for golfers when faced with the long fairway bunker or waste area shot is that they are never quite sure whether they are supposed to blast it out like they do in a green side bunker or try and pick it out .
I have found that most of the time when someone tries and pick the ball out the result is quite unpredictable. The shot often ends up either being hit fat and taking too much sand or bladed over the green.
Here are two options to help you play this shot with more success.
My first preference would be to play the explosion shot just like you would around the green. This time since the ball will need to travel a greater distance use a longer club to hit the explosion shot. You might want to try and hit this shot with your gap wedge, pitching wedge or even your 9 iron. If you practice this shot and find a club which hits it the correct distance I believe you’ll find that you hit these long shots more like the green side bunker shots that you are comfortable with and that your scores will come down.