Finding the 'Short Grass' on Golf Course

Golfers often refer to the "short grass" on a golf course. But even if you're not sure what the "short grass," specifically, refers to, you probably know that it's where you want your golf ball to wind up after playing a stroke.

There are two uses of "short grass," the first being the more specific usage and also the more widely used; the second being less-commonly used and broader:

  1. Most of the time, when golfers refer to a course's "short grass," they are specifically referring to the fairway. Short grass, most commonly, is just another term for fairway.
  2. Less-commonly and more broadly, "short grass" can be used to refer to all closely-mowed areas of the course that are not rough, penalty areas or ground under repair: tees, fairways, greens.
But, today, the term is far more likely to be used to refer to the fairway. That wasn't always the case, though. Like many other words and phrases used by golfers, "short grass" used to mean something different.

Go back far enough and you'll find short grass being used to mean the putting green as distinguished from the fairway. A 1923 issue of Golf Illustrated magazine talks about a golf ball "lying up to forty feet or so off the green," and recommended using a slightly lofted putter "to putt as accurately as if the ball lay upon the short grass," with "short grass" meaning "putting green."

As golf course maintenance practices improved and fairways became, over time, less furry, better kept, the meaning of the term began to change. (This is similar to how "fair green" was once the term used for "through the green" and also for "fairway".)

Today, the phrase is most likely to be heard on the teeing ground, when one golfer might encourage another to "keep it in the short grass" (in other words, "good luck, knock it on the fairway," or, "the rough is brutal on this hole, don't miss the fairway").

And since the short grass today usually means fairway, what is the mowing height of fairway grass? Just how short is the short grass? Most golf courses mow the fairway grass to a height somewhere in the range of 0.350-inch to 0.5-inch.

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Sources:
Coxwenelton, James. "Current Comment," Golf Illustrated, April 1923, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924066734991.
Oatis, Davie. "Finding The Right Fairway Height," USGA, https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/course-care/forethegolfer/2019/finding-the-right-fairway-height.html.
Pedroli, Hubert, and Tiegreen, Mary. Let the Big Dog Eat! (affiliate link), William Morrow Publisher, 2000.

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