San Marcos — Hitting out of the heavy rough from around the green is a very difficult shot unless you have the proper club and technique.

First off, you want to look at all of your options such as amount of green to work with, how far to carry the ball over the deep rough and how the ball is sitting in the deep rough.

Lets start with the amount of green to work with. If the flag stick is positioned back on the green you have a lot of green to work with and you will not need to hit the ball high and drop down soft.

Play the ball back in your stance and plan on hitting down on the ball with a steeper approach with the club. The steep approach will not catch as much grass between the ball and club face and will allow for more control of distance.

If you catch the ball with a shallow approach — and therefore a lot of grass between the club face and ball — you will experience a knuckleball and the distance control is never consistent.

Now lets say the flag stick is positioned just on the putting surface and you have little landing area to work with.

You will want to play the ball forward in your stance with the club face opened. The type of shot you will be playing is called a flop shot.

You will swing outside in with a great amount of club head speed. The ball will jump up quickly and set down softly.

The flop shot is a high-risk, high-reward type of shot, meaning on a miss hit you will either hit the ball far over the green or the ball will be about two feet in front of you after your hit.

Now the high reward for the flop shot is the ball will land next to the hole and immediately stop.

Carrying the ball over deep rough is the next situation to consider.

Should you have very little green to work with, but a lot of approach that is mowed down, you will want to hit more of a bump-and-run shot — landing in the approach of the green and skipping up to the pin.

Choose less loft and plan on running the ball up on the green after landing on the approach. You may not have many options on this shot because the ball has to be hit up in the air to carry the rough and a club with less loft will not do this.

You will need to practice with a wedge then nine iron to see if this type of shot works for you.

Next is the type of lie which will determine the club you will use on the deep rough shot.

You might think you have the perfect lie if the ball is sitting up on top of the grass but you have to be careful not to hit completely under the ball with the ball dropping straight down in your divot.

Should the ball be sitting on top of the grass you will want to either take less loft or with more loft try to pick the ball off the top of the grass instead of hitting down through.

As long as the ball is not buried in the deep rough you should have no problem using different types of shots to recover.

Finally, if the ball is buried deep in the rough, you will want to close the club face slightly and attack straight down on the ball. Your goal on this shot is to get the ball back into play and not leave yourself the same shot again.

The ball will come out low and have some over spin because of the closed club face.

Good luck with this and let me know your progress on this type of shot. Should you have any questions, I would be more than happy to show you these shots, just stop by the course.

Did you know Quail Creek Summer Sports camp for August is quickly approaching? The date is Aug. 10-13 and open to all 7-to-12-year-old children.

Professional instruction in tennis from Texas State head women’s tennis coach Tory Plunkett and golf from John Ferguson, head golf professional Quail Creek. Camps will be daily from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Call 512-353-1427 to sign-up.   



John Ferguson is the General Manager/PGA Director of Golf at Quail Creek in San Marcos. You can reach John at jtferguson@pga.com