Rickie Fowler and the art of making a bunker shot count

SportLocation Golf Desk · 8 Oct 2026

From a lie in the sand, the first task is to judge how much room there is to work with.

A bunker shot starts with a constraint: the ball sits in sand, and the edge of the green can leave little room to be casual. The golfer in this sequence settles over the ball with the club set down behind it, facing a broad stretch of bunker and a target beyond.

That setup is the point of the shot. The player has to send the ball high enough to clear the sand and control where it lands. In the montage, a ball is then shown travelling above a green, followed later by a ball resting near a flag. The images make the short-game task plain without needing to turn every bunker shot into a miracle.

The clip also includes a separate tee-shot follow-through identified on screen as Rickie Fowler. It is a reminder that the montage spans different kinds of golf, but the sharper thread is around the green: a tough lie, a deliberate choice of landing area and the hope of leaving a makeable next shot.