Watching the pros getting up and down or even holing out, from greenside bunkers is a mightily impressive sight even if it can become a little repetitive. Surely putting your ball into a hazard should cause more pain than it seems to do to the world's best golfers but it doesn't seem to. Presumably then the combination of technique, practice, and equipment can be combined by us mere mortals to produce results that are, while not perhaps in the same class as the pros, at least passable.
Why then is it so often the case that we are just pleased to get the ball out the bunker and why sometimes do we suffer the ignominy of pacing around the bunker making multiple attempts to do the same and/ or end up with the cleanest strike of the round and a resultant long trek or lost ball? Why indeed?
Perhaps we simply haven't taken the time to acquaint ourselves with the unintuitive notion of hitting the sand instead of the ball or some other technique that the pros employ to such great effect. Check out the guidance and instruction in the section to learn more about bunker play.
Gary Player, Ernie Els and David Leadbetter talk through how they play bunker shots
With Gary Player, Ernie Els, David Leadbetter