Well, it’s not really that bad. But, I thought I should cover buried lies if I’m going to stick with the beach week theme.

The good news is, the changes you need to make to play a buried lie are small and pretty simple. The bad news is, the more the ball is buried, the less you should be concerned with getting up and down and the more you should be concerned with just getting on the green.

If you haven’t been following along this week, I suggest familiarizing yourself with the basic sand shot from yesterday. Once you have that down, the changes required to handle buried lies are simple. As usual, I turn to Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible for guidance in this area. He has created a helpful matrix of adjustments for handling buried lies on page 287. I’ll summarize for you.

Basically, the basic set up with a good lie consists of aiming about 17 degrees left of the target, opening the club face 45 degrees, playing the ball off the left heel, and taking a shallow divot, allowing the club face to scoot under the ball.

As the lie gets worse, you simply vary the things I mentioned above. You’ll aim closer to the target, open the club face less, play the ball further back, and take a deeper divot. These factors vary more and more to the point where the ball is completely buried so that your stance is square to or slightly closed to the target, the club face is square to slightly closed, the ball is played in the center of the stance, and the club face digs into the sand.

For a half-buried lie, you’d be closer to the normal perfect-lie shot (not halfway between good lie and completely buried): face halfway open, aim about 12 degrees left, play the ball a couple of inches behind your left heel, and dig into the sand a bit.

The fried egg lie (ball sitting in the middle of a little crater) is played more like the completely buried lie: club face only slightly open, aim only about 7 degrees left, play the ball a little forward of center, and dig in a little more than with the half-buried lie.

After making the adjustments, just take your normal basic sand shot swing (or, your 9 o’clock finesse swing, for those who followed my advice and bought the book). Be sure to get to get to a full finish for more consistency. As the ball gets more buried, the lie plus the adjustments you’ll make will cause the ball to come out with a lower trajectory and will run further after landing so prepare for that as well.

There you have it. Not much different from a good lie in the sand. Next time you practice from the sand, mix in some buried and fried egg lies and make these adjustments and see how you do. You might not have a great chance of getting up and down often from these poor lies, but leaving the ball in the bunker or skulling it across the green will spell disaster. Preparing for these types of situations will make sure you’re not compounding the damage.

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Further Reading:

The Basic Sand Shot (Life in the Rough)
In Sand, the Point of Entry is Key (Life in the Rough)
Uphill and Downhill Bunker Shots (Life in the Rough)
Fairway Bunker Shots (Life in the Rough)

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