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Specialty Shots
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Hitting out of the rough requires a steeper angle of attack than normal fairway shots. To achieve that, you'll want less axis tilt. A couple common ways to handle this shot are:
- setting up with the shoulders more level
- swinging more with the upper body
- using more of an upper body lunge swing pattern
- Swinging more outside-in.
The amount of steepness you'll need depends on the thickness of the rough. Short first cuts of rough can be played like normal shots, but deeper primary rough will take some adjustments.
Tags: Poor Contact, Speciality Shot, Member Question, Concept, Intermediate, Beginner
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This content video is hitting out of the rough. So hitting out of the rough can
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require some adaptation. It really depends on reading the lie and the length of
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the rough and the shot you're trying to hit. But I've two commonly see students
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trying to do the exact same swing they would make out of the fairway out of the
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rough. When the ball is especially sitting down, right, when the lie dictates
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that we need a steeper angle of attack in order to make clean contact, you're
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going to have to make some adaptation. Almost similar to the fairway bunker shot,
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some of the simple things to ensure that we're going to have a steeper angle of
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attack include choking down on the club, which simply narrows the circle, which
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gives it a steeper angle of attack. I could lean a little bit more left or swing
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wise. I could swing a little bit more outside in. Again, it really depends on how thick
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the rough is, how long the rough is, how much it's going to affect my ball. So I always
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advocate trying to find a place near your ball where you can take some practice
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swings and kind of feel how the club is going to brush through the ground. In this
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particular grass, I'm not going to have a whole lot of restrictions, but you may
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feel some grass where it really grabs. The more it grabs, the more you're going to have to
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steep in the angle of attack, try to minimize the amount of grass between the club and the ball.
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So if the ball's sitting down, your simple setup changes. You can just lean a little bit more
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forward, try to get your shoulders a little bit more level and maybe even narrow your stance.
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That alone will help steep in the angle of attack and may give you good enough results.
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Kind of like that. But if it's thicker rough, you may have to make some swing
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adaptations. Or if you already have certain swing faults, you may not try to solve them the way
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you would say off your teeth. The one swing fault that is extremely helpful for this
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when you're hitting out of the rough is the forward lunge. So it's hard to replicate if that's not
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part of your normal pattern. But golfers you tend to kind of lunge forward to start their downswing.
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Tend it be really good precise crisp iron players, especially even out of thick rough.
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If you're more of kind of a hangback side bend and you're trying to hit draws,
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you're going to tend to be too shallow and get a lot of grass between the ball, especially with
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the longer irons or maybe even the hybrids. So the longer the club, the more you're going to have
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steep in the path some way. One of the easy ways that you can steep in it is to try to swing a little bit more
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outside in and hit more of kind of a holdoff cut shot as opposed to having a really full
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supination and full kind of normal release. So that holdoff cut shot will get it kind of sitting down a bit.
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So that holdoff cut shot you're going to swing a little bit more arms down and a little bit more
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kind of lunge forward and then hold those arms a bit on the way through. Still narrow stance,
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a little bit more forward holdoff cut. So that style there it's not going to go quite as far as
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maybe making your normal kind of covering style release. But it's just going to you're going to
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err on the side of making more solid contact so it tends to be more repeatable as long as you
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have enough club that's be that you can take an extra club it can be pretty helpful.
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So if you struggle out of the rough, make some of these simple adaptations in order to
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steep in the angle of attack that'll help give you solid contact and more repeatability
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for these rough shots.
