Many of us amateurs don’t have to worry about hitting from the kind of rough we might see on the PGA Tour from week to week, but I know in my case, the rough at my course can be pretty daunting.  The primary rough is only a few inches deep, but it’s thick and healthy and a ball can really settle down.  In the out of the way places, it’s left to grow all year and gets knee-deep.

There are a few things to know when hitting out of the rough, but not understanding that the thick stuff is intended to be punishing and trying unnecessary heroics are likely going to compound the damage.  Don’t be afraid to concentrate on simply advancing the ball down the fairway if the situation is really bad.  No one wants to accept a bogey, but I promise you, when you’re writing down double bogey or worse on your scorecard, you’ll wish you had that bogey back.

With some simple adjustments and awareness of a few things, you’ll be able to make the best of a bad situation.

The Rough Has Fingers

Not literally, but we’ve all heard about how the rough will “grab” the club and shut the face.

Consider for a moment, that as you hold a golf club, there are several ways (geometrically) you can move the club.  Most importantly for this discussion, you can turn the handle to spin the face open and closed.

As the club head approaches the ball during the stroke, the hosel of the club is leading the way.  As it reaches the grass, and the head starts meeting with the resistance of that thick rough, the outside of the hosel is really enduring a lot of friction.

Since the hosel is the axis on which the club turns (as we talked about in the last paragraph) all that friction makes the club want to spin in your hands.  Since this doesn’t happen on a typical shot, you’re probably not fully prepared when it happens, and your hands go with the flow and the club face will close some.

Of course, that means the ball is going left and depending on what your swing path is like, it may be a pull left, draw some, or even hook.

Adjusting To The Friction

There are two ways to deal with  the tendency for the club face to close when playing from thick rough.

The first thing you can do is practice from deep rough to get a feel for the reaction of the club and the ball and simply take your normal swing but allow for the ball to more left by aiming to the right of your target.  It takes some practice to get a feel for how the ball will react, but it’s a simple adjustment.

The second thing you can do is grip the club a little tighter.  This one can be a little dangerous because of the tendency to grip too tightly and can result in a lot of tension in the arms.  That’s the last thing you want.  I like to grip more tightly with the last three fingers on each hand.  That keeps me from feeling too much tension in my arms.

Angle of Attack

If you have a relatively flat swing with a shallow angle of attack, it causes problems because the club head gets lower to the ground sooner on the down swing and thus has that much more rough to fight through to get to the ball.  You might want to try creating a little steeper angle of attack when faced with these situations.

To do that, play the ball a bit further back in your stance, maybe a couple ball-widths more than normal.  When you begin your back swing, try and have the feeling of picking the club up, more than swinging it low and around your body, like when you hit from a bunker.

By doing this, your club head will approach the ball from a steeper angle.  It will have less rough to muscle through and will allow you to make better contact.

Club Selection

Depending on the situation, club selection is key.  You first have to size up what your goal is.  If you’re really in jail, hitting out of the rough becomes about the choice between limiting the damage or risking more.

Sometimes your best bet is to just advance the ball down the fairway.  In this case, you probably want to take a short club like a sand wedge and hack the ball out.  The heaviness of the sand wedge combined with the shorter shaft will give you more control and will have an easier time moving through the tall grass.

If the lie permits and you’re faced with a long-iron shot, then consider using a hybrid or fairway wood instead.  In general, those clubs are designed with a low profile (the face is not as tall), that lowers the resistence that the grass presents.  Some are even designed with features on the sole that also make it easier for the club to slide through the grass.

Shorten The Swing

Despite what Tiger Woods is able to do, being stuck in the rough is a good time to think about taking more club and using a shorter back swing.  You need to be able to swing within yourself and make contact with the ball as best you can.

Swinging out of your shoes and taking a huge swipe at the ball will probably throw off your tempo and maybe cause you to sway.  You run the risk of splashing the ball like a bunker shot and possibly leaving it in the same rough.  That’s the last thing you need.

Forget The Spin

Spin is imparted on the ball when it makes contact with the club face.  The grooves on your irons help to increase that.  It’s what lets you throw those darts at the green.  When you’re hitting out of the rough, grass becomes trapped between the club face and the ball at the moment of impact, greatly lessening the spin.

Even when the ball is sitting up in the rough, you can still lose spin.  When hitting from the fairway, your irons are able to pinch the ball between the club face and the turf, giving you lots of spin.  The rough doesn’t offer the same firm surface to pinch the ball, and so that can cause less spin too.

This leads to what you’ve probably heard referred to as a “flyer”.  Less spin means the ball can fly further and won’t check up like normal when it lands.  The best course of action is to expect this and depending on where the better spot to miss is, maybe club down a little.  Also realize that you may have trouble stopping the ball on the green, so be wary of any trouble behind.

The REALLY Bad Stuff

At the top, I talked about the rough at my course that’s beyond the primary stuff.  The maintenance crew doesn’t cut it at all and it grows wild all year long.  It’s common for the thickest stuff to be 6 inches deep with shoots growing up way past knee high.  It’s not even uncommon for it to be just off the sides of the mounds around some greens.

When you get into the kind of situation where you can barely see your shoes or the golf ball is completely covered in rough of that caliber, you need to adjust your game plan.  Forget about getting it close to the pin (if you happen to be near the green) and forget about hitting a long iron.  You need to take your punishment and just get the ball out of that situation at all costs.

In his Short Game Bible, Dave Pelz gives three techniques for getting out of the worst kinds of rough.  These techniques are last resorts and you’re giving up all precision and just hoping to get on the green (or fairway) – period.  In the book, he teaches “The Chop”, “The Rip”, and “The Blast”.

I’ll leave it up to you to read up on those, but when I get into the really, really bad rough, I like to do the basic rip.  As per Pelz’s instruction, I grip down really far on the grip, until my bottom hand is partially on the metal part of the shaft.  The ball is in the middle of my stance.  From there, I take a finesse-type swing, with one difference:  no finesse.  Just rip the ball – hard.  The object isn’t necessarily to make clean contact with the ball.  It’s to make sure that the ball and everything around it comes out.  This shot is a last-ditch option.

Put it All Together

If there was no rough, then hitting in the fairway wouldn’t be as satisfying.  It’s the game we play, constantly flirting with disaster.  Making these few adjustments will give you a better shot at success.

I can’t reiterate enough, the importance of assessing the situation and picking the realistic play ahead of the heroic one.  If you need to go for it, though, I think these things will help you find a silver lining within the dark cloud.

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