"true" green surfaces

[TEPaul]

I realize this'll be a very difficult question to answer accurately but to you supers out there at what basic stimp speed do you think really highly contoured greens could play to and if they were extremely "true" as opposed to just fast wouldn't this be the thing to strive for for interest and fun for everyone? And shouldn't the "trueness" satisfy most as opposed to just speed? Although really highly contoured greens would be technically a good deal slower do you think if they were really "true" even those modern "speed merchants" would enjoy them nonetheless if they were slower?

One of the reasons I ask is my club regrassed our greens last fall with A-4 when we really hadn't planned to do that with our restoration project. The only reason we decided to regrass was to try to get ahead of the curve and get rid of our Poa annua since we'd been really fighting anthracnose for a couple years.

We used to have great greens really--they were very old and we had every kind of grass in them. So when I asked the super the other day at a greens meeting how he expected them to play vs what we used to have he allowed that we wouldn't believe how "true" these new greens will be.

So what do you think---can "true" greens help in anyway to get people to accept slowing greens down some? Again, I'm sure this will be very difficult to answer and is probably very subjective but try to give the answer a shot anyway.

Thanks.

[A_Clay_Man]

Tom- Your probably lucky enough to golf where even the least ambulatory fixes thier ballmarks. But, for the rest of us poor schlubbs, the excessive laziness found in public golf means "true" is extremely rare. As to your question, I doubt you can stop the dyke when it comes to the fast greenspeeds.
Afterall, the green is the only place a hack can even come close to equating themselves to da pros.

[TEPaul]

a clay man:

That's actually what I meant to ask the super when I asked him the question. I wasn't looking for the answer of "trueness" exactly I was looking for an answer of what we needed to do at least initially to prevent these new A-4 greens from getting too beat up by pitch marks and such.

The word from Aromimink that went to A-4 last year is that that strain can take a real beating in look and such from pitch marks. A-4 is somewhat unusual in its dark sort of dull green color and it's very very monotone! That kind of thing (monotone) can really highlight pitch markering certainly initially.

Our old greens had so many different kinds of grasses on them that they were very mottled looking in coloration and that kind of thing often hides pitch marking (at least from sight not from play). But the super said due to all those grasses within our old greens they were anything but true, particularly in the spring as all those different grasses were sort of growing at their own rates and doing their own thing. So with this new consistent strain he says the "trueness" will be very noticeable to all compared to what we had.

[A_Clay_Man]

Since it's my opinion that golf fits few models, I think a new cruelty needs to be considered. I think more attention needs to be made to those individuals who repeatedly act as if thier actions don't effect those that follow.
Seriously, if a person can be spotted not fixing ballnmarks, not raking bunkers, or dropping the flagstick with a bang they need to be called to the carpet and if actions aren't corrected they should be asked to do thier golfing elsewhere.
It's my belief it won't get that far because the embarassment from being called on the inapropriate behavior will have the desired effect and if it doesn't, who needs them.

[Steve Lang]

TEP,

Think of your experiences of putting on bent, bermuda, carpet, concrete, and astroturf types of surfaces..

I'd suggest that "true" simply means the surface has a consistent friction or drag on a rolling ball from its start to stop.   If one skillfully gets a putt rolling quickly verus sliding or skidding they'll putt well on almost any true surface, but untrue surfaces of literally mixed heritage and upbringing introduce an uncertainty that only experience can deal with.

 

[TEPaul]

Steve:

I know what a bunch of things putt like--I guess I've putted on about everything--but I was sort of just wondering what you all thought about golfers' acceptance generally about putting on a surface that was somewhat slower but very true. I'm only really talking about the difference of maybe 9.5 or 10 max vs something higher like 11 or more.

The real reason I say this is because the stimpmeter is so misunderstood and the mentality of it is so prevalent. Speed was never it's purpose at all but it's about the only purpose people understand today. The only reason the stimpmeter was invented and originally used was for greenspeed consistency not for increased speeds.

And anyone should accept the fact that on highly contoured greens a stimp number like maybe 9-10 or even less is all they can reasonable EVER run without devolving into craziness.

Some people unbelievably are under the impression that as agronomy improves and maintenance machinery improves cutting heights can go ever lower and speeds can increase year after year.

Maybe the agronomy and maintenance industry can keep pushing the envelop year after year with improvements before killing the grass vs yesteryear but the thing they all seem to forget about is physics! The physics of a golf ball across a slope or contour.

That's never going to change--not unless someone changes physics and that's not going to happen.

So this question is really more about trying to sell "trueness" so greenspeeds can be capped for the rest of time on particular courses because I think that's what has to happen to save the slopes and contours of these older green surfaces from being changed at some point in the future.

I'm offering a proposal at my club to hopefully be put in the by-laws with a master plan that the maximum stimp number on our golf course has to be formally capped! And that means forever or at least until the day someone reinvents physics!

[Steve Lang]

TEP,

I certainly concur with your opinions/premise, especially the physics one!   The "stimping" ultimately reduces the usable or reasonable green area for pins doesn't it?

I've thrown out some opinions in the past about not blaming the metric as much as the metricians.. My bottom line on this topic is in the socio-psycho arena.. until you get rid of the macho-hacker-pro-dreamer-wannabe-factor, I think its almost a lost cause.. Isn't it the american way that if "one" is good, then "two" must be better?  Al it takes is one dominant greens committee person to nudge the pro or super over the line...

My pet peve is the excess stimping levels attained for our Club Championship and then the Member-Guest,  typically both in the fall of each year.  For the former it is to help separate the best golfers, I can accept that to a degree, but when the entire feel of the course changes for one tourney, that's patently unfair to folks, who in effect play on a different course for the other ~50 weeks a year, ..

And then there's the member guest stimping follies where the courses are tricked up for a field of players and hackers more worried about how high their's and their opponent's handicaps are than playing real golf..

It's one thing to have crazy speeds and slopes at Putt-Putt courses, where there's at least boards lining the putting surface, or a drain to route you to the next level.. but another to pretend you're something you're not.  

The bermuda greens have just come up in the Woodlands from their winter dormancy, and folks are now saying how slow they are.. but true rolling.. I love this time of year.  

[TEPaul]

Steve;

I'm going to see what happens with my "cap the greenspeed for the rest of time" proposal at my club first. I'm going to rely entirely on the logic that "physics" is not going to allow the ball to move across a slope ever faster year after year without some craziness entering the equation at some point (the greenspeed cap point!) and seeing if they buy that logic.

If they do then I'm going to take the concept of capping the max greenspeed for the rest of time on the road.

I hope that and the alternative of "trueness" will get their attention. The other side of the coin of the proposal to cap the greenspeed for the rest of time is that recontouring or softening greens (a lot of the character of the course) is out of the question for the rest of time too and this is the most logical way to accomplish that--ie formally capping the greenspeed forever!

[Doug Siebert]

I'd love to see greens that putt as true at a slower speed as they do at lightning speed, but you just never do.  Why is that?  Could the expert greenskeepers at Augusta make those greens putt just as true as they do at 8.5 as they do at 13?  When Brad Swanson and I played Bos Landen together early last fall, he described the greens after the round as "the worst combination of fast and bumpy".  Other than those hung up on stimp numbers, I think people like fast greens because at least 99% of the time, they putt truer than slower ones.  That's why people say they putt better on faster greens, even though logically that shouldn't be true, all else being equal, since there is less margin for error on faster greens (except for greens so slow that you need a wristier stroke to hit the ball hard enough on longer putts)

[Neil Regan]

   Maybe fast greens are more true than slow greens because fast greens are usually maintained by the better greenskeepers.
    In my experience, fast grass is less true than slower grass when the ground has significant slope. I think this is because a ball moving at a slow speed stops moving on longer grass, but wobbles on shorter grass. On flatter slopes, gravity has less effect and the ball stays close to on line even as it slows.
    I have tested this for years, and can demonstrate the difference.