Gary Player tees off last July during the Senior Open Pro-Am.
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Gary Player, his ball in a fairway bunker, was worried, though not by the way it ended up on the beach, or the potential battle to put it away.
His disappointment came from someone who would come before him on the sand.
He was upset at the way they had robbed him.
“This is shocking,” he said.
Talking and acting in a recently posted video on YouTube star Grant Horvat’s channel, nine-time major winner saw that previous scratching had created pits in the sand. Hard contact would be difficult, Player and Horvat he thought, if the ball was placed between them.
The player then walked towards the slope of the bunker. There, the sand was smoother.
“So now you get a good lie,” he said. “So for your members, they can play it.”
Can it be offered in the entire bunker? The player said he thought so.
In the video, he turned the bunker rake — with the hoops facing up — and essentially swept the sand, rather than combing it. (Some terms the Player had originally seen as “The Aussie Method” of the bunker range – in that, the sides of the bunker are smoothed and the floor is beaten.)
“I think this is going to be a big thing in your show,” Player said to Horvat as he first threw the tires down, before bringing them back up. “… Look at that. Look at that, compared to that. I mean, it’s like night and day.”
Horvat said, “I see that.”
The player said, “See that? It’s that simple.”
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Let’s continue the conversation about bunker maintenance. In May 2022, this site wrote a story titled “5 Bunker Maintenance Mistakes Golfers Make Too Often,” and that story can be found by clicking hereor scrolling down.
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How’s your sand play? Not your hitting skills, but the technique and smarts you display before and after you swing the club. If you’re like many golfers, you’re prone to making mistakes that are bad for the course or disrespectful to other golfers. Or some combination of both.
Here’s a look at five common bunker mistakes and how to avoid falling into them.
1. Entrance from the top side
Getting in and out of the sand is not meant to be a climbing expedition. When you step up and down the sloping side of a bunker, you not only make deep tracks and cause avalanches that take time to subside—you also risk damaging the grassy edges of the bunker, a blow to the integrity of the hazard. The correct approach is to enter the bunker from the low side, following the same path in and out.
2. Failure to bring the rake with you
Just like you can’t hit without a club, you can’t make a bunker without a … rake. Before you go to your ball, grab a rake and bring it with you so you don’t have to make an extra messy trip through the sand.
3. Lazy raking
Raise your hand if you’ve seen golfers do this. Or if you do it yourself: After hitting your shot, you slowly walk out of the bunker, casually dragging it behind you. Sorry, but that won’t do. Turn and approach the job correctly, moving back and forth to smooth over the sand as you walk back and cover your tracks as you go. If you’ve left a particularly deep track or ball mark, turn the slide over and use the flat side to fill the hole, then turn the slide over again to smooth out the remaining particles.
Josh Sens
4. Leaving the rake in the wrong place
There is no set standard for where to place a rake. Inside the bunker? Just outside of it? In the middle of the road, with the heist’s head in the sand and the handle sticking out? Preferences vary from course to course and you should adhere to them. The only other rule to follow is the rule of common sense: Do your best to minimize the chance that the racket will interfere with play. If outside or halfway is the local rule, place the rake parallel to the direction of the hole on the side of the bunker farthest from the line of play. If the inside of the bunker is the way the course likes it, leave the rake on a flat area of the bunker as opposed to a slope where a ball would be more likely to hang in it.
5. Forgetting to clean your shoes
Sand tracks tracked across a green are evidence of a careless golfer. As you exit a bunker, tap your shoes clean with your head or wedge to remove any sand stuck to the soles. Although tracking sand onto the green does not cause agronomic damage (in fact, because many courses dress the greens with the same sand they use in the bunkers, you may actually be doing the course a favor), it is not an aesthetic nice. Nor is it pleasant for the golfers behind you, who don’t want to deal with the mess you left behind.
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