Sand play is usually one of the last aspects a golfer takes seriously. It may not happen that often and it seems like practice is better spent on something more important. All you need to have though, is a good basic understanding of how to play out of sand and a few tips like these will help in this aspect of your golf short game.

Because every golfer wants to get up and down from greenside sand, there is always a great pressure to hit the ball close from a bunker. The fact is, however, that a top pro who gets up and down half the time is doing very well indeed. For this reason you should not concentrate on hitting sand shots to tap-in range [that is, to within three feet] as you would do for a long putt. Focus instead on hitting to within a target that's 12 to 15 feet in diameter. That gives you up to 7 1/2 feet to play with on each side of the hole can be much easier bull's-eye to deal with. You'll be more relaxed and will hit the ball even closer.

Trying to a hit tee from under your ball is a good drill for getting your drives in the air. It's also a good drill for sand play. Here's how it's done: Tee up your ball in a bunker, and tee it up high. It is the tee from under the ball. Now tee it so that the tee is just barely showing. Hit it out again. Now position the ball so that no part of the tee is visible, the bottom of the ball is flush with the sand. Practice until you can consistently hit the tee out of the sand, then play the same shot while pretending that the tee is still under the sand. The lesson here is that the golfer hits the sand and the sand lifts the ball out of the bunker. So at no point did you think of hitting the ball itself.

The delicate explosion shot [where you see a puff of sand and the ball flies to the hole and stops on a dime] is tough to hit consistently. Most attempts see the ball rolling more than expected. So why not anticipate the roll and play for it? The idea is to take the spin out of the shot by hitting even farther behind the ball than usual [three or four inches is recommended] and compensating for the removal of power by making a full swing. Your ball will explode out of the sand but will roll a good three or four yards.

Once you have a feel for the basics of playing from sand, you can easily understand some of the finer points of bunker play, and you will find it easy to adapt your technique to different types of sand challenges and lies.