Golf courses are filled with trees, water, sand, rough and so on that are just waiting to dole out some punishment.  It’s critical, if we want to score, that we learn basic recovery skills so that these trouble situations have a minimal impact.

Following are five recovery skills you need in your golf game.

Learning to Say ‘No’

That’s right, one of the most important recovery skill is a mental one.

We’ve all been there.  Off the tee, your drive was off target and you end up in the rough.  It’s fairly thick, but you can see the ball.  You have 200 yards to the green with a creek guarding the front, sand on either side, and dense woods behind the green.

In that situation, you need to hit a good shot to give yourself a chance, but being in the thick rough with a fairly long, forced carry, the odds might not be in your favor, depending on your skill level.  The question is, do you have what it takes to say ‘no’ and lay up?

You could take your medicine and hit a couple of wedges in a row and still have a chance to make par.  You’re probably looking at bogey, at worst, if you’re a reasonable putter.

Now, look at the down side in going for it.  Sure, you might hit a great shot and end up on the green or just off with a chance for and up and down.  More likely, though, you’re going to mis-hit your approach and end up in the creek.  That penalty stroke is probably going to put a double bogey on your card.

Or, what if you decide to take more club but catch a flier?  Your shot hits the green like a rocket and shoots into the woods.  At best, you might be able to take an unplayable lie, but what if the ball is lost?  Now you’re talking about a stroke and distance penalty.

Believe me, I know.  It’s very difficult to do it, but being able to set aside ego, optimism, or whatever you suffer from, is one of the most valuable golf skills you can cultivate.  There’s a time and place to go for it, but knowing when that is will make you a better player.

Polishing Your Sand Game

Sand play is one of the most under-developed parts of most player’s games.  The practice bunker at my course gets hardly any use.  I suppose maybe it’s because it’s not next to a practice green.  To me, it seems like at practice areas where there’s a green next to the bunker, players more apt to work on their sand play.

I’d be interested to know what percentage of players that work on their games spend and noticeable time working on their sand play.  Do they hit sand shots to a practice green?  What about fairway bunker shots?  I would bet that most of the players that do work on sand play don’t work on those.

Yet, sand shots are some of the most simple to execute – when you know the basics, that is.  Being a competent sand player gives you the chance to save par after finding your way into a fairway or green-side bunker.  Not being a competent sand player costs strokes, plain and simple.  I’ve actually played with people that experienced noticeable anxiety when playing from the sand. Forget about saving strokes, they’re worried about keeping the ball on the property and not killing anyone in the process.

I covered most aspects of sand play a while back, so if you need to brush up on your sand technique, you can check out these posts from the archives: The Basic Sand Shot, In Sand, the Point of Entry is Key, The Buried Lie: A Sandy Grave, Uphill and Downhill Lies in Bunkers, and The Fairway Bunker Shot.

Keeping the Ball Low

Some of you might play on courses where trees are few and far between.  But in the United States, tree-lined courses are very common.  At some point, you’re going to get a little close to a tree, or you’ll have a tree in your way, and you’ll find that you need to be able to keep the ball low to get under some limbs.

This isn’t a very difficult shot, but it does require some practice.  To execute a low punch, address the ball with a stance that is a little more narrow than normal.  The ball should be way back, well behind center.  Your weight should be mostly on your left side and will stay there throughout the swing.  Your backswing should be somewhat short, as with a wedge shot and you should keep your hands somewhat low on the follow-thorough.

You’re not trying to kill the ball, so your swing should be controlled.  You’re keeping the ball down by de-lofting the club face and by keeping the spin relatively low.  For a longer distance you definitely want to take extra club instead of swinging harder.  The ball will stay pretty low and then run a good deal after landing.  You definitely want to experiment with this shot before trying it on the course so you can get a handle on how high it will fly and how much roll you can expect.

This shot isn’t just good for keeping the ball under limbs.  It it also useful for playing in high winds.  Keeping the ball low will minimize the effect that wind exerts on your shots.

Intentional Hooks and Slices

Most of the time, hitting a hook or a slice is not what we want to do.  We would usually consider it a mistake.  However, there are times when we end up in situations where it can be advantageous to be able to do it on command.

Let’s say, for instance, you’re playing a tree-lined hole that’s also a dog-leg left.  Depending on how far the dog-leg is from the tee, positioning your shot in the right side of the fairway might be crucial.  If you don’t have enough length to clear it all, then it’s critical that you play for the right side of the fairway so that you have an angle at the green.  If you make a mistake and end up on the left edge of the fairway, you may find that you have no clear shot at the green if you’re back a bit from the bend and there are trees in the way.

By all means, refer back to recovery skill one (above), and decide whether it’s best to just take your medicine and hit a wedge or punch something forward as much as possible.  There are circumstances, though, where you may feel like you have a green light and can (or should) go for it.  If that’s the case, you’ll need to be able to do more than play a nice draw (or fade if you’re left-handed).  You may need a controlled hook.

A while back, I covered how to hit a controlled draw or fade.  Feel free to review that now if you need to brush up.

There are lots of things you can do to promote ball flight one way or the other.  In that post I referred to above, there are a number of things mentioned, such as taking a more open or closed stance, using a weaker or stronger grip, and opening or closing the club face slightly at address.

When you need to go from a draw to a hook or from a slice to a fade, it’s simply a matter of exaggerating one or more of those things a little more.  The best place to start is opening or closing the club face at address just a little more.  It doesn’t take much to make a big difference in how much the ball moves.  I wouldn’t, however, recommend exaggerating grip changes in this case.  That can give an uncomfortable feeling at address and that discomfort will do more harm than good.

If you’re very comfortable with the concept of swing plane and you feel like you’re comfortable and knowledgeable enough with your own swing, you can also use that to promote a hook or a slice.

If you want to hook the ball, a flatter plane, with the ball approaching the club more from inside the line will help you do that.  Conversely, to slice the ball, swing along a more vertical plane and have the club face approach the ball from more down the target line (or even from across the line – which is what chronic slicers usually do without realizing it).

One last thing you can do to promote one or the other is to control the release of your hands at impact.  Take a few practice swings and if you’re trying to hook the ball, really get the feeling that you’re releasing the hands through impact, to get the club face closing a little sooner.  If you want to slice it, don’t be afraid to hold on a little and delay the release of the club just a bit so the face stays open slightly longer.

The best thing to do is to experiment with these things at the driving range to understand how they work for you.  You certainly want to do that before getting out on the course and deciding to try hooking the ball on purpose for the first time.

Hitting From Thick Rough

This is probably the most common situation that we golfers face regularly where our recovery skills are tested.  Again, start by deciding whether it’s worth going for it.

By far, the most effective way to deal with heavy rough is to play the shortest, heaviest club in your bag.  That’s typically a sand wedge. A wedge has enough weight to get through the rough and to the ball, and the shorter shaft makes it easier to control.

There are times, though, where the lie makes it possible (or the situation makes it necessary) to go for it, and a hybrid or other long club is the choice.  I covered the basics of hitting from the deep rough last year.  If you have trouble in the deep rough, I think you’ll find that the proper adjustments are relatively simple.

Managing Expectations

The key to being in recovery situations is realizing that we’re in recovery situations. That seems silly to say, but we’re there because we messed up and we’re paying a penalty.  The only reason modern golf courses have sand and long grass is to penalize bad shots.  That’s fundamental to the game.

Often times, it’s the problem of biting off more than we can chew that causes us to hit poor shots in those situations.  If you hit a ball dead down the fairway, you arrive at your second shot and start thinking, “Ok, I have X yards to the green, and the wind is still, and the lie is fairly level, so I need to hit such and such a club.”

The problem comes when you hit a shot into a recovery situation, like into thick rough, and go through the same progression.  You may not even stop to think whether that shot even makes sense.  You’re paying a penalty, and understanding it is the first step to digging out of that hole.  Knowing how to slice and hook, hit from the sand, keep it low, and hit from thick rough are valuable physical skills to learn, but respecting the situation and knowing when to say ‘no’ is the most important.

Remember that and you’re on the right track.  And remember to practice these things at the range before trying them on the course or you’ll end up digging a deeper hole.  Better yet, just keep it on the short grass!

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Five Recovery Skills You Need in Your Game

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.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Hitting From Deep Rough

It was a great technique for getting out of thick green-side rough. Often, if you try to make a normal pitch or chip shot in that situation, the club head can get hung up and any number of things can happen, including the possibility of hitting it fat or thin, skulling it, or flubbing it a few yards. The rough will tend to grab the hosel and turn the face closed causing problems with shot trajectory, direction, and distance.

What you can do in that situation is use a sand wedge and open the face and play it sort of like a little splash shot out of the sand. When you lay the face open a bit, the bounce of the club gets the leading edge moving through the grass better with less chance of the rough grabbing the hosel and shutting the face down. There’s also less chance of the club just digging into the rough and staying there.

As you swing through the ball, resist letting the face close as you would for a normal shot. Keep the face open through impact, like you would for a sand shot. Remember to aim a little left to compensate for the open club face, and prepare for the shot to splash out and run more than it would from the fairway at the same distance, due to the lessened spin.

Above all, be sure to take several practice swings in similar rough near your ball to get a good idea of how the shot is going to feel as the club passes through the rough.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Splash It Out Of The Rough

One of the ways I spruce up my practice time and give myself a little recovery practice is to work on a 100 yard 5-iron. I normally hit my 5-iron close to 200 yards. To cut the distance in half it takes some finesse and a little setup adjustment. Typically, I’ll play most full shots off my front foot (more on that in a future post), so for this shot I’ll put the ball back near the center of my stance or even a little behind center. I’ll take a short back swing, and keep my hands low during the follow through. Keeping a nice even tempo is important, and making sure not to decelerate is key. The result is a nice low shot that flies and runs out to around 100 yards. As always make sure you’re hitting to a specific target (at least a directional target, if not to a specific distance). At some point, we all end up in the trees and we need a shot like this to stay under branches and get back into play or even to get up around (or on) the green.

Sometimes a tree stands between you and the green. Another nice practice twist is to imagine tree trunks in your way and try and play a draw or fade on that low shot. Using the same setup, close or open the club face slightly at address depending on whether you want to draw or fade the ball. Pick something in the distance and imagine that’s the tree in your way (use a little imagination and pretend it’s right in front of you). Start the ball to the left or right of that “tree” and try and fade or draw the ball around it. See how close you can come to your target.

During your practice sessions, experiment with ball position and swing length to see how the shot is affected. Keep your lie in mind too. This shot is much more difficult from deep rough. Remember, we’re not looking for a miracle recovery from the jungle here. In that case, just getting out to the fairway may be the best play. Being able to keep the ball low and turn it left or right when the lie is decent will really open up the possibilities for recovery.

Practice this, and before long you’ll have a good recovery shot in your arsenal and will be in a much better position to score after an occasional bad drive.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

How Often Do You Practice Recovery?