First Cut
The first cut in golf is the strip of slightly longer grass immediately beside the fairway, mown higher than the fairway itself but shorter than the main rough. It is the first, most forgiving band of rough a golfer meets after missing the short grass.
What is a first cut in golf?
Most golf holes have three main playing surfaces between the tee and the green. The fairway is the closely mown target zone. On either side sits the rough, the longer grass that makes a wayward shot harder to recover. On many courses, that rough is not a single height. The band closest to the fairway is kept shorter than the grass beyond it, and that shorter band is the first cut.
Its purpose is to soften the jump from fairway to heavy rough. Without it, a ball that misses by a single foot would sit in the same punishing grass as a ball that sailed twenty yards offline. That seems unfair, and course designers agree. The first cut fixes it: a small mistake earns a small penalty, a big miss earns a bigger one. Players also call it the intermediate cut or the step cut, and it runs in a thin lane along the closely mown grass on most well-kept courses.
One thing to flag before going further: first cut has a second, completely unrelated meaning in tournament golf, which this page covers near the end.
How the first cut works on the course
The first cut is defined by how it is mown, not by where a hole happens to bend. A superintendent sets the mowers to a graduated pattern, with the fairway lowest, the first cut a single step above it, and the primary rough higher still.
Real numbers show how small that step is. Most fairways are maintained somewhere between 0.35 and 0.5 inches, according to USGA agronomy guidance. The Maryland Golf BMP program defines the intermediate cut as a narrow step-up band, usually less than ten feet wide, kept at roughly 1.0 to 1.75 inches. Primary rough climbs well above that, and at a major it can turn brutal. During the 2022 U.S. Open at The Country Club, the second cut was grown to about 5.5 inches, according to Top100GolfCourses.
Because first cut grass is only a touch longer than the fairway, the ball tends to sit up in a playable lie. What changes is contact. A few blades of grass can slip between the clubface and the ball, taking spin off the shot and letting it run out farther than the golfer planned. That reduced-spin result, known as a flier, is why experienced players give a first-cut lie a little more respect than a clean fairway one.
First cut vs. second cut vs. fairway
Golfers often mix these three up, because they blend into one another across a few feet of grass. The quickest way to keep them straight is by mowing height and by how much control a golfer keeps from each.
| Surface | Typical mowing height | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Fairway | About 0.35 to 0.5 in | The cleanest lie on the hole, full control of distance and spin |
| First cut (intermediate) | About 1.0 to 1.75 in | Ball usually sits up, slight loss of spin, small chance of a flier |
| Second cut / primary rough | Roughly 2 in and up, around 5.5 in at some majors | Thick and grabby, distance and direction are hard to predict |
The pattern is a ladder. Each step away from the fairway costs the golfer a bit more control, which is exactly what a course designer wants from graduated rough.
The other meaning: the first cut in a tournament
Away from the grass, first cut describes something entirely different: the point at which a tournament trims its field. Most professional stroke-play events send every player through two rounds, then keep only the leaders for the weekend. That reduction is the cut.
On the PGA Tour, the standard line is the top 65 players and ties after 36 holes, according to the 2026 PGA Tour Player Handbook. The four men’s majors set their own numbers: the Masters keeps the top 50 and ties, the U.S. Open takes the top 60, while the PGA Championship and The Open each hold the top 70. The word first attached itself to this cut because some events once ran a second, 54-hole cut as well, so the 36-hole reduction became the first one. For the full method of how that number is worked out each week, the cut line page walks through it.
Related Golf Terms
- Handicap allowance — The percentage of full handicap applied for a given format.
- Teeing ground — The starting area of a hole, defined by the tee markers.
- Better ball — A format scoring the lower of two partners’ results on each hole.
- Stipulated round — The set of holes to be played in the correct order.
- General penalty — The standard two-stroke or loss-of-hole penalty for many rules breaches.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the first cut count as the fairway?
No. The first cut is the shortest band of rough, not part of the fairway. A ball resting there is officially in the rough, even when the lie feels nearly as good as the short grass.
Is the first cut the same as the fringe?
No, and the difference is worth knowing. The fringe is the short collar of grass ringing the putting green, while the first cut runs alongside the fairway, often hundreds of yards from the nearest putting surface. They simply do different jobs.
What else is the first cut called?
Intermediate cut, step cut, and intermediate rough all point to the same band of grass. Some golfers loosely call it the apron, though apron more often refers to the grass just in front of a green.
Do all golf courses have a first cut?
No. Keeping a separate cut means extra mowing time and cost, so plenty of everyday courses run one rough height throughout. Graduated cuts show up most at upscale clubs and tournament venues.
Sources
- USGA Green Section Record. “Is It Time To ‘Cut’ the Intermediate Rough?” Accessed July 2026.
https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/course-care/green-section-record/62/issue-04/is-it-time-to–cut–the-intermediate-rough–.html - Maryland Golf BMP. “Height of Cut.” Accessed July 2026.
https://marylandgolfbmp.org/height-of-cut/ - Top100GolfCourses. “Architecture Glossary: Graduated Rough.” Accessed July 2026.
https://www.top100golfcourses.com/news/architecture-glossary-graduated-rough - LiveAbout (Brent Kelley). “Explaining the Double Definitions of First Cut in Golf.” Accessed July 2026.
https://www.liveabout.com/first-cut-of-rough-1564048 - PGA Tour. “What Is the Cut?” (and 2026 PGA Tour Player Handbook). Accessed July 2026.
https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2025/05/14/what-is-the-cut-pga-championship-quail-hollow-major-championship
