Muirfield Golf Links in Gullane, East Lothian, Scotland, were home for this year’s 142nd British Open. A privately owned country club, this renowned golf course has been a storied venue that’s hosted 15 British Opens, the Senior Open, the Ryder Cup, the Walker Cup, and 11 amateur golf championships. Muirfield is also home to the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which holds the claim of being the oldest golf club in the world. The club’s records date back to 1744, when it produced thirteen “Rules of Golf” for its first competition.
Muirfield featured several changes for this year’s tournament. It had new tees on seven holes, boosting the course’s overall distance from 7,034 yards when Ernie Els won in 2002 to 7,192 yards (par 71). The biggest change was on the ninth hole, where a land swap with the neighboring Renaissance Club let the country club move this tee back almost 50 yards, extending the par 5 to 554 yards. The hole also featured a new bunker on the fairway’s right. Several other fairway bunkers were moved closer to the green.
One thing that wasn’t new at Muirfield is the rough. It’s deep and thick. Golfers must stay out of it or pay the penalty—just as weekend golfers do when playing their favorite courses. For those of us who can’t avoid the rough, Muirfield provided many golf lessons on escaping the junk. Below are golf tips we give in our golf instruction sessions on how to get out of the junk.
Escaping The Junk
Hitting from a deep thick rough shot is a lot like blasting out of a bunker except for one thing. Instead of sliding your club through the sand, you want to slam it steeply into the back of the ball. You’ll have to make a few adjustments to your stance and swing to do it. If you can see the ball’s top through the grass, use either an 8-iron or 9-iron. If you can see only a small circle on the ball’s top, use a sand wedge.
Stand closer to the ball than normal, play it back in your stance, and choke down on the club. Increase pressure on the grip as well. Choking down gives you more leverage during your swing while increasing grip pressures prevents the club from turning in your hands as it chops through the rough. Aim slightly right and forward press the shaft. You want it leaning towards the target to increase your leverage.
Hinge the club quickly on the backswing. You want your wrists cocked by the time your hands reach your thighs. From the top, swing down sharply, slamming the clubface into the back of the ball. You want to feel as if you’re pulling the handle down hard into the ball. It should pop out and onto the fairway, putting you in position to hit your next shot.
Pitching From Deep Rough
Pitching from deep rough was also difficult at this year’s Open. To pitch from deep rough, the first thing you must do is to increase the tension on your grip. Hold the club at about a seven on a scale of one to 10. You normally want to hold the club at a five, but when you are going through high grass that could change your angle of contact, you must grip the club tighter.
Use a short, punching method to get the ball out of the high grass. You may think you will have more force with a full backswing, but that only provides more of an opportunity to be stopped by the grass. Bring your club back no higher than waist level and come through to about the same level. Try to make sure that contact is made as you begin to come up on the ball. This should get you out and in the air with some distance.
One thing to remember when facing deep rough like that at Muirfield: Don’t try to do too much. Instead, focus on escaping in one and setting yourself up for the next shot. This year’s field at the British Open found themselves playing from the rough a lot – like Tiger Woods on his final round.
Master the golf tips above and you’ll stand a good chance of chopping strokes off your golf handicap and breaking 80 consistently.
