5 Best Solutions To 5 Worst Situations

Situation #5: Driver off the Deck

You're in the fairway but the distance to the pin is just beyond what you normally hit your 3-wood, and you really want to go for the green.Your driver has the least amount of loft, so it's hard to get the ball in the air with it when it's not teed up. Plus, if you try to hit the ball on an upswing like you do on the tee box, you'll top it.

The solution: The only way to get the ball into the air is to hit a cut. Play the ball off your left heel and aim 15 yards left of your target, and think about "picking" the ball clean off the carpet. Swing across the ball instead of down on it — feel like you're pulling your right hand toward your left hip on the way down. That'll give you your cut and guard against taking too much turf.

Situation #4: Fried-Egg Bunker Lie

Your ball has come to rest in the depression it made in the sand. With sand behind as well as under the ball, it takes extra muscle to get the ball up and out.

The solution: Open your stance, set the clubface square and favor your left side with your weight. Take the club up and back down to impact on a steeper, more vertical angle than usual, and enter the sand only an inch behind the ball. The key is to imagine that you're trying to bury the club in the sand and then leave it there.

Situation #3: Severe Downslope From the Rough

Your ball is hung up on the downside of a hill in the rough. The slope moves the bottom of your swing arc back, making it easy to catch the ball fat or thin, and the rough exacerbates any errors.

The solution: Set your body level with the lie by tilting your torso to the left until your left shoulder sits lower than your right. Get that correct and all you need to do is swing down the hill. Don't hang back to fight the pull of gravity as this moves the bottom of your swing arc even farther back and makes whiffing the ball a real possibilit.

Situation #2: Plugged Bunker Lie

Your ball is buried in the sand. You can't float the ball out on the standard "cushion" of sand because there's too much of it.

The solution: Come down hard — and I mean hard — into impact, and feel like you're jamming the heel of the club into the bunker with the toe pointing at the sky. If you keep your hands low to the ground through impact you'll create an explosion big enough to unplug the ball and get it out and onto the green.

Situation 1: Bunker Blast From a Downhill Lie

Your ball has come to rest on the downslope of a greenside bunker. Hitting the ball high enough is harder here because the slope will take loft off your club.

The solution: Take a wider stance than usual to keep your balance. The key is to align your shoulders with the slope. Once you do that, open the clubface and make your normal bunker swing. The big error here is trying to swing too hard or cut under the ball too much. That's when you hit a screaming skull that ends up in a bunker on the other side of the green. The ball will come out lower and with less spin than if you were on a level lie, so plan for the extra roll.

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