A sand wedge for high handicappers.

Bunkers punish higher handicap golfers far more than they punish good ones, and it is almost never the swing. This page explains what actually goes wrong, and how to stop leaving the ball in the sand.

Why bunkers are harder for higher handicaps

A good player hits a bunker shot with the same commitment as a full swing. A higher handicap golfer, having left three in the sand already, does the opposite. They slow down.

That is the whole problem. A bunker shot fails when the club stops moving. The sand is not the enemy. Deceleration is.

And there is a reason people decelerate. On a normal sand wedge the sole hits the sand and the sand piles up against the back of the face. The club genuinely does slow down, whether you meant it to or not. Your hands feel it, you flinch on the next one, and the cycle sets in.

What bounce actually is

Bounce is the angle between the leading edge of the wedge and the lowest point of the sole. More bounce means the sole meets the sand first and the club skids rather than digs.

Most advice for higher handicaps is simply to use more bounce. That is fine as far as it goes, but bounce only controls how the club enters the sand. It does nothing about what happens to the sand once it is in front of the head.

What we changed

The sole of the PM1 Noir is cut open through the back of the head. Sand passes through the club instead of building against the face.

The head keeps its speed through the sand, which means the shot still comes out even when you were tentative through impact. That is the specific failure a higher handicap golfer needs protecting from.

The basic greenside bunker shot

If you take nothing else from this page, take these five things.

• Open the face before you take your grip, not after, or you simply close it again
• Dig your feet in for a stable base, which also tells you how firm the sand is
• Enter the sand about two inches behind the ball. You are not hitting the ball at all
• Keep your chest turning through. Most failed bunker shots are a body that stopped
• Finish the swing. If the club is still moving past your belt buckle, the ball came out

Distance in a bunker comes from how much sand you take and how fast you swing, not from how hard you hit the ball. Take the same amount of sand every time and control distance with the length of the swing.

Which loft for bunker play?

The 56 degree is the one most golfers should own. Enough loft to get the ball up quickly out of sand, and still useful on ordinary chips around the green.

The 60 degree is for short sided shots where the ball has to stop almost immediately. It is less forgiving on full swings, so add it after the 56 rather than instead of it.

The specifics

Not sure which lofts fit your bag? The fitting guide works it out from your pitching wedge. There is also more on what makes a wedge forgiving.