You need to carry a bunker. The pin is tucked. You need the ball to go up and come down soft. So what do most golfers do? They try to lift it. They scoop, they flip, they lean back. And the ball comes out low, hot, and running through the green. Trying to lift the ball is the fastest way to kill a shot that needs height.
Height does not come from lifting. It comes from loft, and loft comes from setup. Here is the method. Take one more club than you normally would from that distance. Open your stance about 20 degrees. Open the clubface to match. Then swing down your original target line and let the loft do the work. That is it. The extra club gives back the distance you lose by opening the face, the open stance lets your body rotate through without the face shutting down, and the open face delivers the high, soft flight you wanted. No scooping required.
This works because of simple geometry. An open face has more effective loft at impact, which launches the ball higher with more spin. More spin means it stops faster. The reason you take one more club is that opening the face also takes distance off the shot, so the longer club keeps your carry number honest. And swinging down the target line while your body is aligned open creates a slightly inside-out path relative to your stance, which keeps the face from closing and killing the height.
Try it as a drill. From 100 yards, grab one more club than normal. Open the stance 20 degrees, open the face to match, swing down the target line. Then hit one ball the old way, trying to lift it with your normal club. Compare the two. The open setup wins on height and softness every single time, and it is not close.
The mistake to avoid: flipping your wrists through impact to "help" the ball up. The moment you flip, you add dynamic loft but lose all compression, and you will thin it or hit it fat. Trust the static loft of the open face. Your job is a clean strike. The club's job is the height.
One more club. Open stance. Open face. Swing the line.
This drill and 220 more live in the Pro Vault, $1 a month at coachellapro.com, each with video and a practice plan. If your iron game needs a full tune-up, book a lesson with me in La Quinta.