B014. The BX-1 Wedge vs Traditional Wedges | NEW Bevel Bounce Design

Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "The BX-1 Wedge vs Traditional Wedges | NEW Bevel Bounce Design"

Do bunker shots give you nightmares?

Traditional wedges require a load of setup tweaks that are tricky to master.

Open the face too much, and you shank it…

Don’t open it enough, and you’ll dig a trench…

What if there was a simple solution that didn’t require so much thought to get out of the sand in one shot?

Don’t miss this video if you’re sick and tired of the frustrations of bunker play!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 11:45

Video Transcription:

Now in this video, I want to show you the proper way to hit a good bunker shot with a traditional wedge, and then how much easier it is with the BX1, how much less setup adjustments there have to be. So first, let's start off with a traditional wedge. Let me go through how the pros are playing bunker shots.

There's nothing wrong with playing it this way, it just requires a little bit of practice. Now the first thing that pros are going to do is they're going to open the face. If I hit a bunker shot with a square face and I swing fairly hard, so in this one I'm going to just have a square face. I'm going to swing fairly hard.

One of two things is going to happen. Number one, I'm going to hit the sand and it goes nowhere. And the reason for that is when I didn't open the face, there's no bounce. There's no soul relief on the club, no bevel to keep it from digging. So as soon as the club hits the leading edge, the leading edge of the club hits the sand, it wants to dig.

So there I swung firm. I hit a little behind the ball. You could see how deep that divot is. And now all of a sudden it really ground into the ground, ground down into the sand, dug into the sand. And it's obviously a terrible shot. Now what happens there, if I'm playing a square face is now I get nervous and I think, Oh man, I don't want to hit that much sand again.

I left the last one right here. So now I'm going to try to hit a little less sand. And all of a sudden I skull one into the lake, 70 yards past the flag. Terrible shot, right? Really embarrassing. That one flew, that thing was still going up. 100 miles an hour as it was flying past the pin. So if you don't open the face, there's no margin for error.

You hit a little too much sand, it digs. You hit a little less sand, it starts to blade it across the green. So what the pros do with a traditionally designed wedge, is they open the face wide open, like a pancake. Now when I do that, you're going to notice that it changes the sole. Now all of a sudden there's this big angle here.

So from the leading edge to the bottom of the sole, you can see there's quite a bit of a gap, and there's this angled bottom of the club, and what that does is it helps the club to skip through the sand, keeps it from digging. That's why the way that I designed the BX1 that we're going to show here in a second, but when I open the face causes some problems.

When I open it wide open and I pancake it open, now you'll look at the the distance between the hosel And the toe of the club is not very much really easy to start shanking shots. When you have a wide open club face, really easy to miss it off the toe. When you have a wide open club face again for pros, they're like, well, who cares?

I can easily just not shank it. I've hit it in a spot about that big every single time, but for recreational golfers, that gets a little bit more challenging. You can see when I set this club down in the ball, that hosel really gets in there. It's so easy to hit a shot and just shank it off to the side of the green like that.

And again, super embarrassing. Now, another problem that creates when you open the face is that you then have to close the face somehow to get the shot to go toward the target. Now that sounds a little counterproductive. Let me explain what I'm talking about. When I set up with a normal square face shot, if I keep everything the same, but I open the face now, all of a sudden that face is pointing out to the right.

Now, pros are going to compensate for that two different ways. They're either going to open their stance. get their feet pointed more to the left, and they're going to swing across the ball to get the ball to go straight toward the flag. That'll get it back straight again. Or, they're going to keep their feet square, lower their hands, they lower the handle of the shaft, and now they're going to swing with really low hands like this.

Now low hands also makes the face point more to the left. So if you see here, when I'm setting up with a vertical shaft, face open. So my face is open like this. Vertical shaft. This club face is pointing to the right. As I lower the shaft, I'll go all the way really extreme here. Now the face is pointing over to the left.

So I have to know either one of two things. When I open the face, I either have to compensate by getting just the right amount left, or I have to get just the right amount hands low. How much do I lower the hands? How much do I go to the left? Well, it all depends on how much you're opening the face. Now, if you're a pro player and you've been playing your whole life since you're six years old, and you're phenomenal out of the bunker.

It's not a big deal. If you hit Tens of thousands of bunker shots you start to get a feel of how much left how much lower the hands But if you don't want to practice that much and you've never really learned that shot That's a lot. It's a lot of time in the bunker. You better get a lot of buckets of balls You better be planning on practicing for months to really get that dialed in the way the pros do it Now i'm not saying that a traditional wedge is bad or that everybody should play With the bx1 wedge.

I think players that have a tough time getting out of the bunker. This is a perfect club for it Now, if you're already a really good player and you know how much to open the face, how much to lower the hands, I get my weight on the left, I change my stance, I go more vertical, I thump the sand. If you already know how to do all that, then a bunker shot like a pro can be fine.

So there I lofted that up nice and high and soft. It's not saying that this club can't work out of the sand. Pros do great with this kind of club, but there's about seven different adjustments you have to make. Now, when you're playing the BX 1. And with that club, I didn't even get into how hard to swing.

Like I said, you're going to have to widen your stance so that you can get lower. You're going to have to swing more like a Ferris wheel and thump the sand. It's really just a totally different swing than you'd make with any other club in your bag. Now with the BX 1, what I did is I designed this to sit flat on the ground.

And now you'll notice that the leading edge is up off the sand or up off the sole the same way that that open face traditional wedge was. So without having to open the face at all, you can see this is a perfectly square face. Now I've got that that front bevel acting just like an open face bunker shot that the pros are hitting.

It gives a lot of advantages to that. Number one, I don't have to open the face, so I have a lot more margin for error from heel side to toe side. It gets rid of a lot of those shanks. Number two, Because I can set up with a square face, I now remove the need to lower the hands to square the face back up, or I remove the need to open my stance to square the face back up.

So because you're not having to open the face, you don't have to make those adjustments. Now, I also talked about how a lot of times when you're getting a bunker lesson, a person will tell you, okay, you're going to have to widen your stance, really get low and wide with your feet. Again, That's not necessary.

The reason they're doing that is so that they can drop the shaft down to make it more flat like this and square the face back up. So I can really just set up with a normal stance, just like I was hitting a 40, 50 yard shot out of the fairway, normal stance with, and again, I don't have to change the ball position.

So when I'm playing an open face pro style shot, I'm going to want to play the ball way up in my stance so that now, again, it makes it easier to lower the hands. Maybe I'm swinging a little more to the left. Now I can swing to the left without hitting my leg, if I show it this way. If I put it way up in my stance, I can swing to the left without getting my leg in the way.

If I was to put the ball in the middle of my stance and try to swing to the left while I'd hit my legs, or I'd have to adjust my stance. There's all kinds of different little combinations of adjustments that you can make. You don't have to do any of that. So when I'm setting up this shot, I'm going to set up with a dead square face.

I don't have to open it at all. Number two, I'm going to go ahead and set up with my feet square to the target. I don't have to open or close them. And I'm going to play that ball right in the middle of my stance, just like I would out of a fairway shot. So I'm right here in the middle of my stance. Now from there, I don't really have to worry.

This is another cool thing about this bevel. When the bevel is built in like this, with this big beveled angle in the front, You'll notice that to get this bevel to touch the ground, I really have to lean the shaft forward a lot. So I'm leaning it, still not touching the ground, still not touching the ground.

There it touches the ground. Because that bevel is like 25 degrees, roughly, I'd have to lean the shaft forward 25 degrees to get this leading edge to start digging. Which means if I set up to this shot, I'd have to be here at impact to actually get that leading edge to dig down to the ground. Now that's a little ridiculous.

Nobody's going to lean the hands that far forward. So really I can just make a normal swing, doesn't matter if my hands are a little forward, the bevel is still working. Doesn't matter if my hands are straight up and down, the bevel is still working. So you don't have to worry about hand position. Now if I'm taking a more traditional wedge, and now I'm trying to hit it high and soft, again, if I don't open the face enough, if I lean the hands at all, it digs.

So I have to work on releasing the club just the right amount to add loft to it and get the sole to work. That's another problem that a lot of players are working in, or having with this. When you do it with this club, I don't have to worry if it's a little too far forward. It's not as precise to have the hands in the perfect position to suit the club to act right.

So here, let me just go through the whole thing. Number one, set up with a square face. Number two, ball in the middle of the stance, feet toward the target. I'm going to play this shot just like I was hitting a 40 or 50 yard shot out of the fairway. And the only way you could possibly mess this up is if I don't swing hard enough, or I don't hit anywhere behind the ball.

With this club, you can hit way behind the ball and it slides through. You can hit closer to the ball and it slides through. The only thing I have to do here is make sure that I hit the sand with a good, full, firm finish. So when I swing, stock set up, imagine like a 60, 70 yard shot out of the fairway, and I'm gonna go ahead and swing on through to a full finish.

That's the only way that you can mess it up. Throw it in the sand, make a full finish, Let the sole do the work for you. You really just got to trust that this is going to take care of everything else for you. So now no real adjustments. I'm going to swing back probably to here, and I'm going to go ahead and swing nice and firm to a full finish.

It's going to blast it out. The sole is going to keep on gliding through.

There you go. You can see how high and soft that's coming out. So to recap, what do you need to do to use the BX1? Number one, square stance, line your feet up toward the target. Number two, just play the ball in the middle of your stance. Number three, a square face. I don't have to open the face at all. The sole is built to play like an open face bunker shot, but you can keep the face square.

Last things last, go ahead, make sure that I thump the sand. I can't be afraid to hit the sand. Because I can have this bevel to keep it from digging, I can hit as much sand as I want. And then finally, make sure that I finish through the shot. I don't want to quit on it. The only way you can mess this up is to get afraid to hit the sand, or number two, be afraid to swing nice and firm and fast.

If you do both those things, it's going to be really easy. Let me go ahead and show you one more time just how good this sole is with the sand. I'm going to set up with a square face here. I'm going to swing firm, and I'm not going to be worried to thump the sand with my BX1. All right, we can see how the shape of that divot is really nice and thin.

I'm going to go back to the traditional wedge again. I'm going to do the exact same thing. Square face setup. I'm going to make the same swing, but I'm not going to be afraid to hit the sand, and watch the difference on how it cuts through the, the sand. Alright, so whenever that leading edge catches, it wants to dig a trench like that, and that gets the ball to, or the club to dig down in the sand, leaves it in the bunker, and then all of a sudden we get scared of that and we blade it over the green.

We really need a club to where we can just make a totally normal setup, totally normal swing, And design the sole to play like an open face pro bunker shot without having to make any of the adjustments. And that's exactly what the BX 1 does. So I'm excited to hear what you think about it. Get your own BX 1 somewhere down on this page or somewhere on this page you'll be able to find a link to get your own BX 1 and I can't wait to hear about your tremendous success with it.

Best of luck out of the bunkers.