Ideal Rough Height

[Mike Hendren]

Acknowledging different grasses, soil, climate types, fairway widths, maintenance budgets and other factors, OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL (ceteris paribus for you intellectuals) what is the ideal rough height?

Stated otherwise, what  fraction of a stroke should rough potentially extract? I'm thinking zero to one-half.  Or if you like, is rough a strategic element for day-to-day -play?

One reason I ask is that I'm a digger (under the theory that there are three types of fairway strikes - the dig, the sweep and something in between) and modest rough doesn't bother me at all since I can't spin the ball from the fairway anyway.  Few mid-to-high handicappers will admit it but they often prefer to play from the rough if maintained at modest height.  I can flop a sand wedge from greenside rough without fail but don't ask me to nip the ball with that club from a tightly mown fairway

I grew up on an un-irrigated nine-holer where Bermuda fairways were mowed once a week (if they needed it) so I have a learned bias against tightly mown turf.

The cognoscenti decry the rough at Augusta National Golf Club, but I say with another inch it's the ideal height.

Just some random thoughts.  

Yours?

Bogey

[PCCraig]

Wide fairways and thick 3" - 4" rough is my ideal.

[Jason Topp]

Of course the real answer is - it depends.

My general preference is random and not irrigated so that you are always taking a chance when a ball goes in the rough but there is a decent chance you will have a shot at the green.  Take away the sprinkler heads and mow less frequently and the best golf experience results even if it looks bad during dry spells.

[Bill_McBride]

Bogey, did you ever aim for the rough during a drought on your un-irrigated course, knowing you would get 30 yards more roll?

[Jason Thurman]

A half-stroke penalty on average sounds about right. Maybe more on courses with extra wide fairways and less on courses with extra narrow ones.

[Brent Hutto]

I think the ideal height for rough is 1-1/2" but no more than that. If a ball settles to the bottom of the rough and can not be seen until you're looking straight down on it, that is too deep. Playing the land of Bermuda inch and a half is plenty "strategic" all right.

I'm not opposed to stepped cuts with something intermediate between fairway and the 1-1/2" cut when using Bermuda grass. For finer bladed cool climate grasses I see no reason not to just maintain fairway and a single rough height in the 1" to 1-1/2" range.

Looking for balls is tall/thick rough is the single most joy-killing element of playing golf. If you want more "strategic" elements than a 1-1/2" cut of grass then put some water or OB stakes there or something.

[Bradley Anderson]

In the north where we grow cool season grasses I like a bluegrass and fescue blend cut at 2.5 inches twice per week.

A 1 inch intermediate cut mowed three times per week provides a nice transition between fairway and rough.

[Phil McDade]

 Few mid-to-high handicappers will admit it but they often prefer to play from the rough if maintained at modest height.  I can flop a sand wedge from greenside rough without fail but don't ask me to nip the ball with that club from a tightly mown fairway

Bogey

Bogey: it's not quite Sunday, but I'll confess -- I'm in your camp on this. Really tight fairways are tough for me; light rough has never bothered me, although it bothers me more the longer the club I have in hand.

I don't have an exact measurement, but a standard: Rough should be only so long as one can easily (less than a minute searching, for sure) find your ball, and should allow you to always be able to play toward your target (as opposed to pitching out sideways). But it should also be long enough that a poor swing, or poorly executed shot, and particularly a shot that takes on too much risk, comes with the possibility of real and exacerbated trouble on your next shot. In short (like many of my views on golf architecture), rough should be high enough, but not so high, to make you think.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I'm in the half stroke belief mode.  That puts most rough at 1.5".  That should be enough to create a flyer lie, making the approach shot harder than if in the fw, and is reasonable to preferred by many average players as noted above.  

Add in the practical side of seeing your ball more often than not to reduce frustration, speed play, etc. and we have a winner.

Also, it should be enough to differentiate fw from rough, but 1.5" should be enough for that.

I don't think we should think about rough on the average country club (or CC for a day, or muni) in terms of what US Open competitors would face.  I mean, golf is for enjoyment and who can say they really enjoy hacking it out of 4" rough sideways?  Or make multiple plays forward in about 30 yard increments.

I will say, my attitude is reflective somewhat of playing more couples golf this summer than anything competitive or even with the guys.  This game is just HARD for 99% of golfers......

[Sean_A]

Yes, it depends.  If its dried out links rough 12 inches is fine.  If its normal parkland rough probably no more than 2 inches tops. Ideally, the rough should be unpredictable rather than even - that means it shouldn't be fed or watered more than enough to just keep it alive.  Sometimes there is no penalty and sometimes it is a harsh penalty.  I could never really understand the idea of trying to gage a penalty amount.  It doesn't make any sense to me especially if we are talking about sustainable golf and that is what I talk about practically 100% of the time.  Rough is just not the fairway.  Its not like we should aim to have create something intentional from it - it is what it is, but whatever that is should be cheap and cheerful.

Ciao

[Jason Topp]

I thought the sandbelt courses had ideal rough.  I think it was crispy bermuda - at least in January.  It was much more playable than the summer bermuda here that is irrigated.

[Bill Gayne]

Not to be overly formulaic but some proportionality to fairway width and length of hole.

[Pete_Pittock]

Wide fairways and thick 3" - 4" rough is my ideal.

If I wanted to convert to Shi'a Islam and practice self flegellation on the golf course I might agree with you.  Too much time spent looking for the ball. Depressing to chuck the ball out of the rough with a full stroke penalty. Increased chance of injury to wrist and a chance of a season long layoff. High rough hides hazards such as rocks and roots.

If I played a course that had 4" rough, and found that was its norm, I would never play there again, or go there a first time unless it was bucket list.

I'm in the 1.5"camp   

 

[Tom_Doak]

The ideal rough height is as long as it can be while still easily finding a golf ball.  This varies wildly depending on grass types, soils, and rainfall.  Clubs which mandate any specific height of cut will probably have it wrong at some point during the year.

Those who think the rough height should be calibrated to "shot values" such as a half shot penalty -- I don't know what to say, other than rough is a lot more penal to weak players than to strong ones.

[Jim Sherma]

The ideal rough height is as long as it can be while still easily finding a golf ball.  This varies wildly depending on grass types, soils, and rainfall.  Clubs which mandate any specific height of cut will probably have it wrong at some point during the year.

Those who think the rough height should be calibrated to "shot values" such as a half shot penalty -- I don't know what to say, other than rough is a lot more penal to weak players than to strong ones.

+1

if you care about pace of play then being able to walk/ride directly to your ball as you approach it is paramount. However high you can make it and still maintain this is fine by me.

[John Kirk]

1.5 - 2" here in the Pacific Northwest, where both poa annua and rye grass thrive.

[Lou_Duran]

For every-day play in dry, lean conditions, 1.5" - 2" (common Bermuda); 1" or less if fertilized and irrigated, particularly if it is a hybrid like 419.  A bit higher rough if greens are maintained soft and lush.

[Joe Hancock]

Rough? What rough?

Joe

[Matt MacIver]

During the heat of summer and the fastest growing season I think the ideal rough height is when half the ball is above the rough and half below.  Maybe worse than that for club championship or a tough Day but that's it.

[John Kirk]

You want the rough to yield a significant percentage of "flyer" lies, where the ball travels farther than a fairway lie.  I like 10-25% of rough lies to be flyers.

[Brent Hutto]

During summer our rather lush Bermuda rough tends to give two kinds of lies. The kind where you can get the ball out but it may be a bit short if you can't catch the ball first cleanly and the kind where you can't really get the ball out in anything like normal distance and direction. Flyers don't seem to be as common as they are with ryegrass or bluegrass type roughs up north.

I did face one shot today that was like the I.E. of a "flyer lie", the kind they'd picture in an instructional book or TV demonstration. (You know with the bright green and wet grass laying down pointing toward the green, about 1/4 of the ball showing). So I took one and a half clubs less and sure enough it made that squishy flyer sound and ended up just past pin high.

Hard to say but I believe a steady diet of flyers like that would be harder to deal with that the steady diet of balls coming up a few yards short from heavy Bermuda lies. Five or six yards short of the hole is generally less costly on the scorecard than squirting out a club or two longer than expected.

[Jeff_Brauer]

The ideal rough height is as long as it can be while still easily finding a golf ball.  This varies wildly depending on grass types, soils, and rainfall.  Clubs which mandate any specific height of cut will probably have it wrong at some point during the year.

Those who think the rough height should be calibrated to "shot values" such as a half shot penalty -- I don't know what to say, other than rough is a lot more penal to weak players than to strong ones.

Well, if you want to gauge it by the average player, and I think most courses should, to keep it as playable and less penal for those who pay the bills, then the answer is NOT to keep it as long as possible, but still see the ball, it should be to keep it as short as possible and still see the difference between rough and fairway.  With color differences like between bent and blue, you can probably mow blue at about 1.25", maybe a bit more.  With 419 everywhere, it might have to be a bit higher.

[John Kirk]

Another type of flyer is the dry brown lie, where once again the player has to play less club.  This happens on occasion with poa annua in the summertime here.

Dry fescue lies are supercharged.  The ball gets little or no spin, and they can roll out 2-3 times farther than a typical lie.

[Doug Siebert]

The ideal rough height is as long as it can be while still easily finding a golf ball.  This varies wildly depending on grass types, soils, and rainfall.  Clubs which mandate any specific height of cut will probably have it wrong at some point during the year.

Those who think the rough height should be calibrated to "shot values" such as a half shot penalty -- I don't know what to say, other than rough is a lot more penal to weak players than to strong ones.

Are you thinking in terms of being more natural / easily maintainable?  Because I think in courses with much narrower fairways than yours have, your rule of thumb would result in courses that are overly penal for bogey golfers.

I agree with you 100% about getting it right depending on conditions, but in some conditions there really isn't a good solution.  My home course tries to maintain 3" rough height.  That means it is mowed down to 3", so during a typical summer they'll let it hit 4" before it gets cut back to 3" (they don't do "scheduled mowings" of rough, but on an as-needed basis)  Problem is, during mid/late spring when it is growing like gangbusters it can exceed 6" (and thick!) if a few days of rain have delayed the scheduled mowing of the rough.  I'm not sure there's a solution for this though.  It would be nice if it was possible to make the fairways wider in such conditions to keep the course from playing a half dozen shots harder just because of the rough, but with different grasses for fairway and rough that's perhaps not too feasible.

[Will Peterson]

I think each course has it's ideal rough height, but I like rough that is rough and not uniform.  It should be somewhere in the 3-4" range, but it should not be uniformly lush.  Some areas might be thick and nasty requiring a hack out while others might have much thinner grass allowing you to hit whatever club you like.

I have run into the same rough situation at two courses I played regularly in the past, and I wonder if it happens elsewhere.  Each course had fairway, 5-15 yards of rough, and then long fescue.  Both courses cut the rough to around 1".  Both courses had issues of people looking for and losing balls in the fescue.  People would look forever to find balls, especially after they lost a couple.  

I suggested that they should cut the rough to 2-2.5", and was told I was crazy and just wanted to make it tougher since I was a low handicap.  That wasn't the case at all, and my real reasoning was pretty simple.  From my experience, the overwhelming majority of balls that lower handicappers hit into the fescue flew in or went in on one bounce. A large amount of the balls that higher handicappers hit into the fescue rolled into it because the rough was so short it didn't slow them down.  A little bit more rough, but not so much to really make it too difficult, would help keep more of these balls in the rough, would speed up pace, and cut down on lost balls.  

Only had one person ever agreed with me, the super.  He couldn't do anything about it because the owner wouldn't let him.