Basic bunker shots are easy. You don't even have to hit the ball. To play a regular greenside shot you simply splash the club into the sand an inch or two inches, perhaps even three inches, behind the ball, and it will pop out and finish on the green. All you have to do is understand why the sand-iron is designed the way it is, and why the set-up is all-important.

You may have noticed that your sand-iron features a heavy flange on its sole. Study the flange closely and you will see that the back edge sits lower than the leading edge. That gives the club what we term a degree of 'bounce' (some clubs have more bounce than others- as a general rule, the softer the sand the more beneficial that bounce factor is). When the sand-iron is skimmed through the sand, that flange acts as a rudder, forcing the club - and the ball - up and out to safety.

Don't thank me. Thank Gene Sarazen.

Open the clubface, then open your stance

To benefit from this unique design, you need to adjust your set-up, starting with the way you grip the club. The more you open the clubface, the more you increase that element of bounce. So, before you set-up to the ball, swizzle the club through your fingers to achieve the desired clubface position. A useful guideline here is to imagine that, as you hold it up in front of your body, a square clubface position equates to 12 o'clock. You want to turn the leading edge clockwise so that it points somewhere between 1 and 2 o'clock. Then, having placed your hands on the grip, open your stance (i.e. as you settle down to the shot make sure that your body line points to the left of the target), and position the ball just forward of centre in your stance. To play the shot, simply swing along the line of your toes and don't be afraid to hit the sand fairly hard

(see U-shape swing). The momentum and energy you create will be absorbed by the sand at impact, so you actually need to swing quite forcefully to have the ball travel only a small distance. Practice will develop your feel for these shots in terms of the distance you fly the ball. The less sand you take (i.e. the closer you aim to strike the sand behind the ball) the less energy is absorbed and the further the ball will fly. More sand, less distance.