Gary Player hits a shot last July during the Senior Open Championship pro-am.
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Gary Player, his ball in a fairway bunker, was bothered, though not by how he ended up in the beach, or the potential struggle in leaving it.
His frustration came from someone who’d come before him in the sand.
He was peeved by how they’d raked it.
“This is shocking,” he said.
He also had a fix. It’s a bit of a hack.
Talking and playing in a recently posted video to the channel of YouTube star Grant Horvat, the nine-time major winner saw that previous raking had created grooves in the sand, making solid contact difficult if the ball settled among them. Smoother sand was his preference, like what he pointed at on the bunker’s upslope. “So now you get a decent lie,” he said. “So for your members, they can play that.”
Could that be offered throughout the bunker? Player said he thought so. In the video, he flipped the bunker rake over — with the tines facing upward — and essentially brushed the sand, instead of combing it. (Some term what Player had initially seen as the “Aussie method” of bunker raking — in that, the bunker faces are smoothed out, and the floor is raked.)
“I think this is going to be a significant thing on your show,” Player told Horvat as he raked first with the tines down, before flipping them upward. “… See that. Look at that, as compared to that. I mean, it’s like night and day.”
Said Horvat: “I do see that.”
Said Player: “You see that? It’s so simple.”
The sand was now smooth. The wrinkles were ironed out.
Let’s keep the bunker-maintenance conversation going. In May 2022, this site wrote a story headlined “5 bunker-maintenance mistakes golfers make way too often,” and that story can be found by clicking here, or by scrolling below.
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How’s your sand game? Not your shot-making skills, but the technique and savvy you display before and after you swing the club. If you’re like a lot of golfers, you’re prone to making errors that are bad for the course or disrespectful to other golfers. Or some combination of the two.
Here’s a look at five common bunker mistakes and how to avoid falling into them.
1. Entering from the high side
Getting in and out of the sand isn’t meant to be a mountaineering expedition. When you trample up and down the steep side of a bunker, you not only make deep footprints and trigger avalanches that take time to smooth over — you also run the risk of damaging the bunker’s grassy edges, a blow to the integrity of the hazard. The proper approach is to enter the bunker from the low side, following the same path in and out.
2. Failing to bring the rake with you
Just as you can’t hit a shot without a club, you can’t rake a bunker without a … rake. Before going to your ball, grab a rake and bring it with you, so you don’t have to take an extra mess-making trip across the sand.
3. Lazy raking
Raise your hand if you’ve seen golfers do this. Or if you make a habit of it yourself: After striking your shot, you tromp slowly from the bunker, dragging the rake haphazardly behind you. Sorry, but that’s not going to do it. Turn around and approach the job correctly, raking back and forth to smooth over the sand while walking backward and covering your footprints as you go. If you’ve left an especially deep footprint or ball mark, turn the rake over and use the flat side to fill the depression, then turn the rake back over to smooth out any remaining rumples.
There is no set standard for where to place a rake. Inside the bunker? Just outside it? Halfway in between, with the rake head in the sand and the handle sticking out? Preferences vary from course to course, and you should abide by them. The only other rule to follow is the law of common sense: Do the best you can to minimize the chance that the rake will interfere with play. If outside or halfway is the local rule, lay the rake parallel to the direction of the hole on the side of the bunker farthest from the line of play. If inside the bunker is how the course likes it, leave the rake in a flat area of the bunker as opposed to on a slope, where a ball would be more likely to get hung up on it.
5. Forgetting to clean shoes
Sandy footprints tracked across a green are evidence of an inattentive golfer. As you step out of a bunker, tap your shoes clean with your putter head or wedge to dislodge any sand clinging to the soles. Though tracking sand onto the green does no agronomic damage (in fact, because many courses top dress greens with the same sand they use in the bunkers, you might actually be doing the turf a favor), it’s not a nice aesthetic. Nor is it nice to golfers behind you, who don’t want to have to putt through the mess you’ve left behind.
Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
