When your ball settles deep in the rough, it’s easy to feel like there’s no good way to make solid contact. You swing harder, but the club still seems to grab and twist in the grass.
According to GOLFTEC’s Josh Troyer, that’s because the problem isn’t a lack of swing speed — it has to do with your angle of attack.
“Players with steeper angles of attack tend to handle the rough better,” Troyer says. “It allows the club to come down on the ball more directly, instead of skimming through the grass too early.”
That concept closely ties to something Troyer (and all GOLFTEC teachers) harp on daily: hip sway. This is the manner in which your hips move toward the target during the downswing. Most skilled players shift their hips about six and a half inches toward the target from the top of the backswing to the finish, which helps control two key things:
- Low point — where the club meets the ground.
- Swing direction — the path the club travels through impact.
“Good players move their hips enough toward the target so they can hit the ground in the right spot and on the correct path,” Troyer explains. “Bad golfers either don’t move forward enough, or they stay too far back. That’s when the club path gets out of whack — too far in-to-out or too steep and down.”
Here’s where it gets interesting: golfers who move their hips too far toward the target often produce an in-to-out path that’s too extreme, leading to a shallow angle of attack. That’s the kind of swing that sweeps across the turf rather than driving through it — and it’s a killer in thick grass.
“When you start hitting out of thicker rough, it becomes really hard to get clean contact with a shallow attack angle,” Troyer says. “You see a lot of players who hit big draws really struggle from the rough because their club gets too close to the ground too early — the grass grabs it, and they can’t get through to the ball.”
That’s why Tour players often talk about trying to hit fades or cuts when they’re in gnarly lies. Those shot shapes naturally promote a steeper angle of attack — exactly what you want when you need to chop the ball out cleanly.
“They might not even know why it works,” Troyer says. “But when you hit a fade, your club’s coming down a little steeper. It’s easier to get through the grass and make solid contact.”
So next time your ball buries in the rough, don’t just swing harder. Adjust your setup and your thought process: aim slightly left, feel like you’re hitting a soft cut and let the club descend a bit more steeply. You’ll catch the ball cleaner — and give yourself a much better chance at hitting a pure iron onto the green.
If you want to get some expert insights into your swing, book a swing evaluation with GOLFTEC below.
