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Heavy RoughPlaying Out Of

Getting out of Heavy Rough... I have discussed points on this topic in several Editions, but you continue to ask me questions on the subject. That is why I have decided to devote an entire Edition to the matter, so we can hopefully get your questions completely answered, once and for all.

I get a lot of questions on this one. It

seems, for the most part, we professionals are just about the only ones who understand how to play a variety of shots out of the heavy rough. Heavy rough presents a ton of problems and a wide gamut of situations which we must learn to handle.

Where do I even start on this one? We have longer shots on long par 4 holes and

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Hitting out of heavy rough doesn’t have to be tough... You just have to develop a FEEL for it. This month you will discover how to adjust, and practice for these shots when they show up on the course.

WHAT’S ON THIS MONTH’S DVD

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on par 5 holes. We have iron shots out of heavy rough, fairway wood shots, cute little delicate shots in close around the greens. There is no end to the things we need to know about these shots.

Golfers will ask me how to hit a shot out of heavy rough either over a bunker with a close pin, or over a mound with a short side pin position. They ask it as if there were some sort of professional secret that will automatically help them get their ball close to the cup out of this stuff.

Hereʼs a question for you, right off the start. Does your golf course have an area where you can consistently practice these shots? Hereʼs another one. How many golf courses have you ever seen that have a practice area where golfers can go to practice these types of shots?

I will almost guarantee you ninety-nine percent of you had to answer “no” and “none” to those two questions. Golf courses typically only think about the all mighty dollar, and they completely disregard the needs and desires of the golfers.

When I managed, I was not always able to provide these types of practice areas, but I always did my best to do so. What really became of interest to me was the fact that even when one of the courses I managed was able to provide these facil i t ies, the golfers wouldn ʼt take advantage of them.

Listen up here, because this might just be you. Golfers tend to not like to practice anything that gives them problems. Youʼve got to be kidding! They will write to me for help, as if I have some magic pill to give them. They

want to know what to do when they are in heavy rough somewhere on the golf course.

They ask the questions because they canʼt play the shots. Then I give them their answers, and they usually still wonʼt practice. They wonʼt practice the shots, “because they arenʼt any good at them”.

Does this sound like an oxymoron, or what? “I donʼt want to practice it because I canʼt hit those shots,” and at the same time saying, “I canʼt hit those shots because I wonʼt practice them.” What a vicious circle this is. Iʼm not trying to beat up on you. We have all been there, and we have all done that.

Itʼs time to put a stop to all of that nonsense and to get with the practicing. Before you do that, though, let me give you some information which will hopefully increase your understanding, as well as your success rate.

Getting good at hitting out of heavy rough does take a bit of practice. And most courses don’t have an special area for this.

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I would like to begin this with the shots around the green. When we are in the heavy rough right next to the green, I think it is one of the toughest shots to handle consistently.

Once again, this is one of those shots which takes a lot of practice. The average golfer simply will not spend the time it takes to really learn how to not only perform this shot, but, more than that, how to judge the amount of swing it will take to hit the shot successfully.

As I stated earlier, golfers tend to think there is some hidden mystery to this golf shot, and if they could just learn the secret, they would never fluff another of them. If golf were really all that simple, we would all be on the PGA Tour. There wouldnʼt be any difference between any of us and the tour players.

Golfers need to be honest and realize those guys have only become the players they have become, because they have put

in thousands of hours practicing. I have never heard of a tour player who has not hit at least a million practice balls–and that probably doesnʼt include any of their short game practice or putting practice.

I continue to say, “Golfʼs an easy game.” I will never change my thinking on that one, but that has nothing to do with the amount of practice it takes to become a great player. Inner Circle members, you are not going to become a scratch player, a par shooter, just by reading this information.

You are going to have to put in a lot of practice time. It would probably be more correct if I were to change my saying to, “The golf swing is a very simple thing to learn.” That isnʼt quite as catchy, or clever, of a saying, but that is what I really mean by it.

For example, anyone can learn how to shoot a basketball. However, in order to play on a high school team, a college team, or even better, a team in the NBA, you would have to put in a whole lot of hard practice time. It would be grueling, to say the least.

Golf is the same way. Learning how to swing the golf club efficiently and properly is a very simple process. However, learning how to control your golf shots, and learning all of the various nuances to the game and the variety of lies you might encounter, all takes a lot of dedication, time, and practice.

HEAVY ROUGH AROUND THE GREEN

The reason I feel this way about these shots is very simple. In the heavy rough, we have to swing strongly enough to get the clubhead all the way through the heavy grass, and still not swing so strongly that we hit the golf ball way too far. That is the major reason we all struggle with this shot.

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I try to keep going back to that on a regular basis in the Inner Circle, because golfers tend to think we are professionals because we are smarter, or because someone gave us “the tip of the century”, or because we were just born to play the game well. Well, Iʼm here to look you right in the eyes and tell you that is all a bunch of bull. Every one of us has sacrificed more than you could ever know or understand, in order to become the players we are.

That is why I am once again telling you all I can do is to explain how these shots work, and then you will have to go somewhere and do the practicing.

A man wrote not too long ago and asked how hard he should swing to hit a good shot out of the rough next to the green. Please try to hear what I am telling you on this. I am only talking about differences in strength here, and not talking down to anyone or situation.

If I am talking to a man in his early thirties who has very strong hands, I can share one set of ideas. However, if I am talking to a woman in her late seventies or early eighties who has relatively weak hands, I have to speak in a totally different set of terms and words.

The strong young man will be able to hold his club fairly lightly and it wonʼt take a lot of his strength to keep the clubhead “moving” through that heavy grass. Then when I am sharing my thoughts with the player who has the weaker hands, I have to suggest to her that she hold the club a little firmer and take a pretty hefty swing, in order for her clubhead to swing on through this heavy grass.

When we are close to the green and in heavy grass, there are some things we definitely must take into consideration.

1. Lots of Green to Work With:

If the cup is cut far enough away from my golf ball that I have a “sufficient” amount of space to run my shot, I will use that to my advantage.

In order to do this, I will typically use my sand wedge and place the ball back in my stance. I use the sand wedge for the simple reason that it is the cub which usually has the most weight in the clubhead. That little extra weight in the clubhead makes it a bit easier to get the clubhead down into the grass and to the ground.

For those running type shots, I like to put the ball back and my weight forward. That gives me the ability to comfortably put my hands well forward. Donʼt write and ask “how far forward” you should have them, because that always depends upon how low you are trying to hit your shot. We have to get the

(a) ball up quickly enough to get out of the heavy grass, and yet

(b) we are attempting to hit it low enough to make sure the ball will roll out, and go all the way to the pin.

The next thing is to be certain to get you clubhead moving up and down at a fairly steep angle. Once again, that is all a part of having your hands well forward. We want the clubhead moving up and down relatively steeply so we donʼt get too much of that heavy grass between our club face and the golf ball.

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If we swing the club in a “sweeping” fashion, the natural arc of that motion will bring the clubhead into the heavy grass behind the golf ball. The heavy grass grabs the club and causes the clubhead to begin to decelerate before it gets to the golf ball. We cannot hit any of our golf shots well or consistently if we are decelerating when we come into the impact area.

With some practice you will learn to pop your golf ball out of the heavy grass relatively low, and onto the green so it will run a bit. Here again, the heavy grass will reduce the backspin on the golf ball, and that will make it roll more than normal.

Once again, golfers will write and ask how come they canʼt make the golf ball stop rolling out of heavier grass. If we practice this enough, we will easily come to the realization that the ball doesnʼt stop as quickly out of heavy grass. There simply isnʼt a way to get the club face as cleanly onto the golf ball, and thus we have less spin.

2.To a Close Cut Pin

If your golf ball is close to the green and the pin is relatively close to you, then you must try to find a way to get your golf ball up into the air much faster and higher. Because there isnʼt as much backspin on our shots coming out of heavy grass, we have to utilize shot height the make the golf ball stop quicker.

This situation brings us a whole new set of circumstances. As I mentioned just above, when we swing the club so it comes into the golf ball at a shallower angle, it gathers a lot of grass on its way to the ball. All of this heavy grass tends to slow the clubhead, or create a deceleration situation.

Here is where we run into problems. Our eye and mind sees a fifteen yard shot, including the rollout. When it sees this distance, it automatically senses this is a very soft swing. However, we are in heavy

When close to the pin, you’ve got to get up out of the grass quickly, and use more height so the ball will stop on the green

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grass, which slows the clubhead. As a result we have to take this shot and swing as if it were a longer shot.

If I have one of these shots, and I feel I need to carry the ball ten yards, leaving five yards of rollout, I will need to do my best to estimate how many “extra yards” of flight I will need to feel in order to actually net out with ten yards of carry.

For instance, I determine the grass feels like it will slow my clubhead by “three yards”, then I will have to convince my inner man, my subconscious mind, that this is in reality a shot requiring thirteen yards of carry. That can be a bit tricky, if you donʼt have a clue how hard to swing to turn a ten yard shot into a thirteen yard shot.

Sounds like another good reason to do some practicing, to me.

For this shot, you will want to open the club face a bit. The open club face will help keep the club flowing through the heavier grass a bit, too. Now, before you take a swing at the golf ball, you should find a place where the grass is very similar, and take several rehearsal swings. This is to give you the feel of the shot before you actually take your address for the real thing.

I want all of the feedback I can possibly get before making my real shot. Once I can feel the deceleration that takes place in the heavy grass, it is much easier to get my inner man to go ahead and swing the club a bit stronger than the shot looks like it might require. It will also let you feel how to “keep the clubhead moving” through this stuff.

When you learn to get a feel for how much you think you might need to open the club face for any given shot you might be required to hit, then you will start to hit much more consistent shots around the greens.

When your golf ball is farther from the green, but well within the range of your sand wedge, you might find that the same thought process may work for you. We still have to determine whether or not we need to hit a lower shot, or a higher shot in order to get the results we are hoping to achieve.

The rest of it works pretty much the same, from the stand point of keeping the clubhead moving through the shot. You will still have to swing just a little stronger, for just a bit more distance on the shot, in order to counter the effects of the longer grass on the clubhead.

One side thought, we have all heard the commentators and the teachers talk about how the heavy grass will “grab” the hosel, or the toe, of the clubhead and twist it out of position, resulting in a poor golf shot. While I have experienced this, and while I do not argue with these statements, I have seen thousands of shots come out of heavy rough without any effect from it.

I have also done my best to try to see what it is the commentators and teachers see that would tell you whether the heavy grass was going to catch the heel or the toe of the club the most. This is why I like to take some rehearsal swings in grass that is as close as possible to the actual situation my ball is in.

When you take these rehearsal swings, take them fairly softly and with light hands on

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the club. This will many times allow you to experience whether not there will even be any effect at all on the clubhead, and which one it might be. Keep in mind, we are only

attempting to gather some information with these swings, so the actual shot may not do what the rehearsal indicates. In my mind, itʼs still worth the effort.

Letʼs take a few minutes here to talk about iron shots to the green out of heavy rough. For the most part, these are relatively similar to the shots in close to the green, but there are still some things to consider when hitting out of the heavy grass to a green when we are farther away.

The first thing is there will some amount of grass between the club face and the golf ball, no matter how skilled you are at hitting these shots. That means there will definitely be less backspin on the golf ball, so we must consider all of this prior to our club selection and attempting our shot.

This tells us we have to make certain we do not fly the golf ball all the way to the center of the green, especially when the pin is in the center, or even in the front. Therefore, when you look at your yardage markers, you must remember that is not the distance to the “entire” green, but it is the distance to the very middle of the green.

If your ball is at the 150 yard marker, you should immediately think of a distance more like 140 to 145 yards. If there is not a bunker between you and the flag stick, then that would probably be a good way to analyze the situation.

However, if there is a bunker at the green and right between your ball and the flag stick, then you will have to consider some other possibilities. Now you will need to decide whether or not you feel comfortable attempting to fly the golf ball all the way over the bunker, or whether you might be better off playing away from the pin to a safe spot on the green.

If you decide to go over the bunker, and if you are right in between clubs, then you should think about taking an extra club and opening the face a bit. Golfers will talk about “getting a flyer” from time to time out of the rough. In my opinion, it has never been a flyer, but rather a ball with less spin that wonʼt bite when it lands on the green.

The other place I have seen what might be considered a “flyer” is when a golfer takes an extra club out of the heavy rough, and then gets good enough contact for the golf ball to fly relatively normal.

If the green you are playing into is fast, and if the pin is placed on a pretty good slope, then it would be well for you to try to be certain to take less club in an attempt to keep you ball below the cup for an uphill putt. If you have a lot of confidence in your chipping, you might even choose to try to

IRON SHOTS

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keep the ball just short of the green and chip your next shot close to the cup.

Years ago, I was an excellent bunker player, so I would often try to hit these shots right at the pin. I knew if I came up short I could probably get it up and down, most of the time, without any problem. If I would hit the green, I would be happy, but if I didnʼt hit the green I was usually just as happy.

In my thinking, I would just as soon be in the bunker, and in my comfort zone, as to see my golf ball run twenty or thirty feet beyond the cup. Those putts didnʼt bother me, but it frustrated me to not be able to stop the ball where I wanted. When I say frustrated me, I am talking about the lack of ability we all have to stop the ball on the green out of the rough.

One more thought for you is when you find your golf ball in the rough, you must first off make a decision whether or not you can even hit a normal golf shot from there. At times we are in rough so deep that our first consideration is simply, “Which club do I need to use in order to at least get the ball out of this rough?”

If the shot is a 7-iron distance for you, and you are certain you are not able to hit your 7-iron well from this particular lie, then

you might need to consider what iron, and what loft, you might require in order to at least get your golf ball up and out of there quickly. The next decision you must consider in this case, is to find a place in the fairway that you feel you could easily attain with the club you have chosen.

I have had to make this decision on more than one occasion, so donʼt be a hero when you are not one hundred percent certain you can hit the shot to or somewhere close to the green. This is one of those places where our ego can cost us extra strokes very quickly.

Iron Shots out of Heavy Rough

Remember, l e ss sp in means the ball is usually coming in a bit hot, so it is probably going to run on you.

Getting out of the rough and back onto the short fairway grass is always your FIRST PRIORITY. So whenever you are in doubt.. Just make sure you get out .

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Now we really have some things to discuss, because golfers all tend to pull out the old 3-wood or 5-wood in order to hit a long shot, no matter what the circumstances might dictate that you do. I often say golfers many times seem to only use their head for a hat rack. They just do not think well a lot of the time, and then they wonder why they have such a difficult time shooting better scores.

Iʼve seen tons of golfers go into three inch high rough for their second shot on a par 5 hole, and they have their 3-wood in their hand. They just know they have what seems like a mile of grass between them and the green, so that instantly means you hit your longest fairway wood.

With two whiffs, and a dribble or two, they finally have their golf ball in the short grass. The only problem is that they are still over 200 yards from the dance floor. This is about the time they look at me and say, “That shot gets me every time. I donʼt know what Iʼm doing wrong.”

I am always tempted (you know how I am, and it really isnʼt to embarrass them–but to get them to think better) to say, “It looks like your timing was off on your lunge”, or “You could have kicked it farther than that.” I donʼt say it–honest.

In reality, all I can actually do is to wonder what in the world was taking place between their ears. They just said that shot gets them EVERY time. Then why donʼt they think to try another avenue of escape?

I need to cover a little ground here. If this

were a playing lesson, I would have spent some time with them before they ever walked into rough that deep with a 3-wood in the first place. However, when I am out playing golf with a group, the ground rules are it is my opportunity to relax and play a round of golf, the same as it is yours. Therefore, I do not do “lessons” during a round of golf.

If I were giving a playing lesson to this golfer, I would first suggest he/she take the time to study the lie in an effort to determine what club they are 100% certain they can use to at least get the ball out of this terrible rough. I donʼt care if it takes a sand wedge to get your golf ball up and flying quickly enough for extracting from that tall grass.

I know a lot of shots are wasted on the golf course because the golfer doesnʼt know how to consistently hit solid golf shots. In spite of that, there are just as many shots wasted on the golf course by the average golfer because he or she simply does not know how to analyze a situation honestly.

I say that, because golfers all tend to say to themselves something like this, “If I can do this just right, I can hit this shot. After all, I hit one similar to this a couple of months ago. I know I can do it.”

Truth be known, you have messed this shot up nineteen times out of twenty times in the past, but the mere fact that you have hit it once or twice in your career does not mean you can hit it right now. You need to learn to put the ego on the bench and do what makes good sense.

LONG IRONS, HYBRIDS, AND FAIRWAY WOODS

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A smart tour professional will NEVER attempt to hit any shot with which he is not 100% perfectly confident he can hit right now. He never thinks in terms of, “I have hit this shot before.” He ONLY thinks in terms of, “Iʼve hit this shot so many times that I donʼt even have to think about it. This is a down deal.”

They might go for a hybrid in this situation, but if the rough is any higher than that, they will almost always take an iron for the shot. Keep in mind that when they go for the iron, they will not make that a “borderline” decision, either. They will take an iron which will have more than enough loft to get the ball up and out of there on the very first swing.

A smart player will NEVER take any undue chances on the shot not working out as planned. The average golfer will choose the wrong club at least 90% of the time. Please read that statement over a few times, because many times you are losing a stroke in your round when it has NOTHING AT ALL to do with your golf swing. It is your thinking.

Bad decisions cost all of us strokes. I have seen way more of that than I would have ever expected when playing PGA club pro events. Even most of these guys and gals will make some of the weirdest odd ball decisions on the golf course, and it blows my mind.

Iʼm not saying I havenʼt made my share of them, also, but I tried my best to learn from my bad decisions. I have played tournaments with professionals who seem to keep right on making the same bad decisions the entire round.

After I have accidentally hit myself on the thumb several times with a hammer, I try to take the time to figure out why it hurts so much, or what I can do to keep from doing it any more. Golf is not different. If you struggle hitting your hybrids and your fairway woods successfully from heavy rough, STOP TRYING TO DO IT.

Find another way to get out of those tough lies.

When we are attempting to hit a fairway wood or a hybrid out of heavy rough, we really incur some issues. First off, there usually isnʼt enough loft to get the ball up and flying quickly enough.

Many times players havenʼt considered how the ball would be effected, even if they were to make perfect contact on it. As an example, a 3-wood typically has 15° of loft built into the face of the club. In heavy rough, that might mean that the golf ball would only be two inches off the ground in the first eight to ten inches of its forward travel.

A touring professional would never hit any of his fairway woods from any lie where at least one half of the gol f bal l is c lear ly beneath the top of the rough. Getting a fairway wood onto a ball half covered in grass is tough enough.

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If the rough is even with the top of the golf ball, it would be approximately one and three-quarters of an inch high. Just for explanation purposes, this would mean that there is a possibility that the golf ball would travel forward the first five inches or so after impact, completely enveloped in heavy grass.

The heavy grass would eliminate almost all of the backspin you might have had a chance of developing, so that means the ball couldnʼt fly, even if it were up in the open sky. Then secondly, that little space of four to five inches of heavy rough is dramatically slowing both the clubhead and the golf ball. That means there may not be enough velocity on the golf ball to even get through the grass far enough to become airborne.

How does all of this take place? If you were to take an axe and swing it vertically into the rough we could immediately observe two very important things. First of all, the sharp edge of the axe blade would allow the axe head to cut right through the grass and bury itself into the ground.

Secondly, i f we were to do this immediately at the back of a golf ball nestled down in that rough, we would see that it is possible to get the sharp edge into the grass close enough to the ball that we could almost eliminate any grass from coming between the axe and the golf ball. I know that is absurd, but follow me on this.

Now, if we use a golf club like a fairway wood or a hybrid, we have a circular motion which comes into the golf ball from behind it. It is not used in a vertical swing like the axe was. With the axe we were not attempting to hit the golf ball forward. We

were on ly look ing a t the var ious applications we could make with different instruments.

The axe was coming in almost perfectly vertical, but the clubhead is coming in almost level to the ground. This means the clubhead entering grass covering at least half of the golf ball is starting into that grass approximately twelve to fifteen inches behind the ball. At the same time, it is still slightly descending a bit as it comes into the grass.

So the clubhead is touching the grass as much as twelve inches before it gets to the ball (see below) and it is traveling, letʼs say,

at 80 mile per hour. This big glob of metal is also sinking lower into the heavy grass as it moves toward the golf ball. There is a very good chance in very heavy rough that the grass will slow the clubhead by at least one-third of its speed before it gets to the golf ball.

In a good golf swing we are supposed to ACCELERATE to the power point, but here in the heavy rough (remember heavy rough doesn t̓ necessarily have to be tall rough) the clubhead is decelerating as it approaches the golf ball. It sounds like we are in a lot of trouble already.

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I have never suggested this before, but I am going to give you a couple of drills you might want to try in some heave rough. When you are performing these drills, please hold the golf club very gently and loosely in your hands. If you are holding the club tightly in the rough, the drag on the clubhead could cause you to strain or pull a muscle.

The first of the drills is for you to take a club and make several swings in some fairly heavy rough. The goal here is for you to feel how much the rough drags or slows the clubhead from moving through the heavy grass. Try to get a good sense of how the heavy rough makes the clubhead decelerate through the swing.

Do this drill with several different clubs, from the sand wedge all the way up through your 3-wood. I know I told you not to use your 3-wood in this heavy grass, but I still want you to learn to feel the things I have shared with you. Once you feel it for yourself, you will not have to take my word for it.

Experience is a wonderful teacher. None of us likes to go through problems, trials, and disappointments in our lives; however, most of the time these adverse experiences are some of our best teachers and our best lessons. It is much like I have said so many times in the past, “Itʼs not the getting into a

problem situation that is necessarily a bad thing. We all get into bad situations, both in golf as well as in life. What we do about the problem is the making, or the breaking, of the golfer–or the person.”

Finally, find some pretty heavy rough and practice hitting golf balls out of it. First start with short shots, like chips and soft pitches. Using some of your own golf balls, hit some five to ten yard shots out of heavy rough, using a modified half swing, or so. Chip some balls, also, so you can begin to develop a feel for hitting the shots. Once you develop a feel for the shots, you will have far more confidence in hitting them on the course.

ADVANCEDThe next thing that takes place reminds me

a little of being in the sand around the greens, because the clubhead is also gathering a pretty good little chunk of grass between the club face and the golf ball. That little wad of grass has the same effect as you would experience when hitting a golf ball with a wet

sponge taped to your club face. As you can readily see, this really spells

disaster for our chances of hitting this shot with any degree of success. It simply is not a good decision to attempt to hit a golf ball out of heavy rough with a fairway wood or a hybrid.

Next Month...Finally... In Edition 24, we will cover something that you guys and gals have been asking for years. How to Hit your Driver. This one is going to be fun. How hit and control the “big stick.” See you next month.

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