Slow Greens

[BCrosby]

I agree with this comment:

"When you cut greens low, you eliminate grain which should be part of the game of golf. The 18th green here (Whistling Straits) is about 18,000 square feet and not a blemish on it. No heel marks, no brown spots, no poa annua (meadowgrass). It's so doggone true that if the ball is set on the correct line, it's going to go in. In those conditions, I'd expect players to shoot the lights out."
 
"Professionals have a harder time putting on greens of seven or eight than they do on the really fast ones. On slow greens, you could have three different speeds, downgrain, up-grain and cross-grain, to contend with."

- Pete Dye, August, 2004

Slower greens are cheaper to maintain, permit more contour, offer more interesting recovery opportunities, and - on balance - are no easier to putt than fast greens.

I played Wild Hourse a couple of weekends ago. The greens could not have stimped at more than 8 or 9. Yet they were rock hard. Stopping even a well hit wedge was difficult. Best, most fun greens I've ever played. The perfect meld (Phrase used under license from TEP.).

So why aren't the WH type greens the model? Why are clubs hell-bent on getting their greens to stimp at 11 or 12 while having to keep them soggy to keep them alive? Are we still in the thrall of the ANGC syndrone?

With all the new, highly ranked minimalist courses out there, is getting over our fixation with fast greens the last frontier?


Bob  

[Marc Haring]

Bob

I think you’ve made an extremely valid observation. We get so hung up on accurate restoration of a classic course but when do we restore the old green speeds? Surely this would be an essential component. I don’t know how slow the old greens were stimpmetre wise, but I would guess at around 7 to 9 max. I know the standard height of cut even when I started was 3/16ths in the summer and we’d miss out a couple of days a week. 1/8th or even a 1/10th is standard now!
I’ve recently raised the height of cut on my greens back to this old cutting height and you know what……… I’ve received no complaints except from a couple of the scratch golfers and quite a few compliments. So I got two grumbles out of 1500 members. That’s a ratio I can deal with.

We played a local course yesterday with rapid surfaces and it was hard work. Bring back the slower greens and enjoy.

How about slower fairways aswell?

[Josh_Mahar]

Bob,  I am glad you enjoyed the greens at Wild Horse, however I am surprised at your assessment of green speed and firmness.  Your stimpmeter must be different than mine and the greens have been as soft as ever in the past month.  I guess this proves once again that individual perceptions are what drives "greens assessments" not actual conditions.  So as a superintendent you have to learn that you will never ever please everyone.  
Anyway, fast greens are not going away-- most people like em even if they can't play em.

[GeoffreyC]

Bob

I too believe your observations are correct.

Please go to the Feature Interview section and read the words of Linc Roden.  He has been preaching this for 30 years now and its come to practice at Huntingdon Valley.

Linc has also written a book where his theories are expanded upon from what he could fit into the interview.  It's a fascinating read.

[BCrosby]

Geoff -

Thanks. I will check it out. Hope you are doing well and continuing to fight the good fight.

Josh -

I stand by my description of the WH greens that day. They were hard as rocks yet no faster than a 9. In short, absolutely spendid.

(BTW, it is a wonderful course. I might even argue that WH's internal bones are better than Sand Hill's.)

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

To maintain greenspeed around 11 it's not really necessary to keep greens soggy. Of course, a lot of this has to do with what kinds of strains greens have. These new A and G bent strains can easily be cut to run at 11 and they just love dryness (which produces "firm" conditions).

As for actual grain--very, very few seem to want grain today and try to remove it by such processes as regular verticutting but, as mentioned above, HVGC in Philly actually went to great length to cultivate grain back into their greens (to create that old fashioned complex playability). HVGC has also been running speeds of 11 or so regularly for years.

In my opinion, that combination is about as interesting and challenging as golf on greens can get---eg, firm surfaces (light dent, no more, to a well struck aerial shot), speeds around 11 and some grain to contend with!!

But again, true grain, of the type and extent HVGC has is very rare. Most of these highspeed greens today are extremely true, and that's cool too.

I do not ever want to see a classic course with interesting old slopes and contours soften or change their greens in the name of speed. In other words I just don't want to see any course touch their old slopes and contours but on the other hand I really have changed my mind on firm and fast greens---I just love them--by far the most interesting and challenging, in my opinion.

Or put another way, I just don't think greens (even very slopped and contoured ones) at around 8 or so can ever be as fun and interesting as around 10+.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tom,
I couldn't agree with you more about the speed.
a friend and I recently played Waterbury CC and their greens were running in that 10/10+(our estimate) range. The surfaces there were well contoured and sloped. They dented on impact but balls seldom broke the surface. We could be bold with the uphillers but needed caution with downhillers. Roll one on the low side of the cup on a side hill putt and you'd pay, roll one over the high side and the comebacker wasn't bad. Any slower and these greens would still be wonderful to putt on but the full effect of them would not be felt.

As an aside: This is a Donald Ross gem that just hosted the Conn. PGA sectional championship. Tom Gleeton (the club's Pro) won in a four-man playoff with a score of 207(-3) for 54 holes. WCC is 6,340 yds, par of 69 and a rating of 71.

Kavanaugh was right, what a slouch Ross was.  

 

[Joe Hancock]

Pin positions are more available at slower green speeds as well. I imagine some greens lose 10% or more of the pin placement area for every foot of increased green speed?

TEPaul, would you rather the challenge of approach and recovery shots at fast green speeds over the increased fun factor of pin placements available at slower speeds? No correct answer, just wanting your opinion.

Joe

[TEPaul]

"Pin positions are more available at slower green speeds as well. I imagine some greens lose 10% or more of the pin placement area for every foot of increased green speed?"

Joe:

There's no question this is true. I don't know that it would be a loss of 10% for every foot of green speed increase unless the greens are quite small and contoured but it can be NOT INsignificant. This is precisely why I believe every golf course should find their own "reasonable maximum" green speed unrelated to actual stimpmeter reading numbers (or the green speed of some other golf course's greens)!

"TEPaul, would you rather the challenge of approach and recovery shots at fast green speeds over the increased fun factor of pin placements available at slower speeds? No correct answer, just wanting your opinion."

Provided a course's greens have an adequate number of pin positions on all their greens to handle traffic and stress on all of them at faster speeds I certainly do prefer the challenge of approach and recovery on faster greens over increased pin placements at slower speeds!

[Tom_Doak]

Marc:

Regarding old green speeds, Pete Dye told me he paid a man to analyze film of the 1962 US Open at Oakmont and figure out the green speed for the event.  [If you know the % of slope they are putting on, how far the ball rolls, and how much time until it stops rolling, and you are good at math, you can figure this out.]

Pete's expert told him the greens were rolling at 8 1/2 for that particular US Open.

[TEPaul]

Joe:

One of the reasons I say the above is we just increased our "reasonable maximum" green speed from around 9.5 to 10.5 or even 11. At that one foot plus increase in green speed most of our green space "transition areas" (green space that never was pinnable) have really come alive and with that one foot increase now offer some approach and recovery possiblilities and options and even putting options we simply never had before at one foot slower speeds! It just makes the greens totally come alive, in my opinion, and everyone seems to be loving it. But we do need to be careful on some of our old pin postions---eg some of them do need to be reanalyzed slightly! On the other hand, in our recent restoration we did expand our green sizes back to what they used to be and that does compensate for our reanalyzed pin positions!

[TEPaul]

"Pete's expert told him the greens were rolling at 8 1/2 for that particular US Open."

TomD:

In my opinion, that analysis by Pete (and his expert) is both accurate (in an exact stimpmeter reading sense) and also somewhat misleading in a playability sense.

If one stimped those Oakmont greens in the regular stimping procedure they probably would have stimped around 8.5 (because of the two-way roll test). But that's misleading and the players who putted those greens in the 1960s felt they were far faster than that.

Obviously, stimping is a two direction process. Those greens at Oakmont had more grain in them than most any greens have today for one thing! That fact made those Oakmont greens roll really slow into the grain and like lightening down grain---eg a differential in speed few see today.

Pete's contention was those Oakmont greens couldn't have been cut much lower than would allow them to roll much faster than 8.5  because the "low set" capability of mowing equipment today had not yet been invented back then to be put into use (back then).

What Pete didn't realize, however, is Emil Loeffler had created a way of jury-rigging his mowing equipment to cut lower than anyone of that day did!! Loeffler was filing his bed knives far more than anyone did if anyone even thought to do that in those days.

W.C. Fownes (Loeffler's boss) was not just a fanatic on penally prepared bunkers, he was an absolute fanatic on super high green speed for that day and age.

The reason I know this is from one Bill Stitt, a guy I served on GAP with for years who was for a number of years the green chairman of Merion and was also Emil Loeffler's nephew.

Bill Stitt lived at Oakmont G.C. and when he was a kid he cut the greens for his uncle. He was a good player and he knows exactly how Loeffler did this and he also knew the Oakmont greens, even as far back as the 1940s, were far faster than any golf course ran or was able to.

I saw Pete about two years ago and told him about Loeffler, Stitt, the super filed bed-knives, the lower cut heights Loeffler had jury rigged, effects of grain on perceived speed and how Oakmont's greens down grain (downhill?) were faster than anything golf knew at that time.  I was going to get Stitt and Dye together to talk about this and the real speed of Oakmont's greens in the 1960s and even a couple of decades before that but for one reason or another it didn't happen. This is a good reason to get them together now.

There's no question whatsoever in Bill Stitt's mind he can prove Pete, his experiment (and his expert) wrong about what Oakmont's greens back then really putted like green speed-wise! Loeffler had figured out a few ways of producing green speeds no one had ever thought possible previously!

[Neil Regan]

Geoff Shackelford's anthology, Masters of the Links, includes Pete Dye's essay on this subject.
  In the essay, Pete recognizes the effects of grain (and rolling and drying) on putt speeds, and suggest that they might have rolled at about Stimp 11 downgrain.
  His concluding paragraphs summarize well the case put forward by Tom Paul and others:

  The other aspect of the game you lose with green speeds averaging between 11-13 on the Stimpmeter is the ability to build contour into your putting surfaces....[with] daily speeds over 11 feet ... no architect in their right mind can build any contour or character into their greens. When you take contour out of the greens and speed them up, you only make the game easier for tha average-putting Tour pro, and harder for the club player. There is much more skill required in putting slower, undulating, and grainy greens than there is in putting flat ones that are fast
   So at some point we are going to have to figure out what we really want from our golf courses. Do we want interesting tests of skill with lots of character and perhaps a little grain on the greens ? Or do we want level but slick putting surfaces that only make the game less interesting ?

[Dan Bock]

Grain may be ok when you play a course all of the time, but for those of us who play courses all over the place, it sure isn't much fun to play greens rolling at 7- on the stimp with balls that break up hill due to the grain (or don't break because they are so slow) and you can't get an uphill 20 footer to the hole.  And there is satisfaction in reading a putt and watching it do what you thought instead of watching it bounce along like the Easter bunny.

I love undulating greens and they can still be cut to a reasonable speed without sacrificing too many pins placements.  I also agree that there is nothing more fun that firm and fast and I think these conditions offer there own kind of challenge.

I believe each set of greens has it's own "reasonable maximum" speed and would not want to change a green's contours in order to make it playable for a particular green speed.

Conditioning can certainly add (or detract) from the overall enjoyment of a golf course as it can create (or remove) many of the strategic options that an architect intended - and that is true of turf that is too slow or too soft and too fast.  I recently played a fun (looking) course that was so soft and slow that virtually all shotmaking was removed.

[cary lichtenstein]

I'd like to see the pros play the first day at Pinehurst #2, greens with a stimp of 5, like they were when Donald Ross built them.

Then take it to an 8 for the 2nd day

A 10 on Saturday

And a 12 on Sunday.

Who do you think would win that U.S. Open???

[TEPaul]

"I'd like to see the pros play the first day at Pinehurst #2, greens with a stimp of 5, like they were when Donald Ross built them.
Then take it to an 8 for the 2nd day
A 10 on Saturday
And a 12 on Sunday.
Who do you think would win that U.S. Open???

Gary:

I have no idea WHAT would win it but I do know WHO would win it! It would be someone virtually putting on dirt on Saturday and even more dirt on Sunday!!!!!!!  It could even go down in history as the "Scalped Green Open of Pinehurst #2!"  

[Tom_Doak]

I would love to know from everyone, what today's definition of "slow" is.

At most of the clubs I visit, anything less than 10 on the Stimpmeter on an everyday basis is a cause for shame, regardless of how much contour is in the greens.

I know every course should have a "reasonable maximum," but what is the reasonable minimum for courses with a fair amount of contour in the greens?  Is 8 or 9 now unacceptable because it might be boring on an uphill putt?

P.S. to Cary:  I would win that Open, by default:  everyone else's head would explode.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Can most golfers even tell the difference between 8 feet and 10 feet? Moreover, greens that measured 10 feet early in the morning are no longer rolling that quick by 3 pm, following a full-day of growth.

As we know, the Stimpmeter was invented to assist greenkeepers with consistency, not speed. The average golfer's obsession with the "speed measurement" is comical, really. As long as the greens are relatively smooth, they should be fast enough in most cases. Particulary where there's interesting slope and contour.  

Just play golf!

[BCrosby]

Tom D. is getting at the basic point.

Many clubs have gotten over the notion that fairways need to be tree-lined or that courses need to be manicured a la Augusta. Courses look rougher; less dirt is being moved, existing contours are used more often. Clearly changes are taking place in gca. And that is a good thing.

But the old fixation with fast greens remains.

I think that fixation is the enemy of classic, Golden Age contouring. It makes for a false arms race involving lots of money, makes little sense as a defense against par, limits pin positions and the recovery opportunities a designer can offer.

In short, the whole minimalist thing has changed the way we think about gca over the last decade.

With one exception - green speeds. Other than Pete Dye and a couple of others, everyone else seems to be singing the same tune they've been singing since the '50's.


Bob  

[TEPaul]

"I would love to know from everyone, what today's definition of "slow" is.
At most of the clubs I visit, anything less than 10 on the Stimpmeter on an everyday basis is a cause for shame, regardless of how much contour is in the greens."

TomD;

This is precisely the problem, in my opinion. There can't be and simply shouldn't be some general definition of what "slow" is for all courses, at least not in the context of the stimpmeter and it's readings. There shouldn't be any general definition for what "fast" is either. It just doesn't work that way from course to course due to a whole variety of reasons, and in the end it doesn't really matter anyway.

That's why I believe any and every club should simply find their own "reasonable maximum" green speed. To find a "reasonable maximum" green speed for any course isn't that complex although it can be somewhat time consumming but the good news is once done you can simply keep it there for the rest of time!

How do you find it? In my opinion, simply as specifically as possible determine what the minimum amount of pinnable spots any green on the course NEEDS TO BE or HAVE to prevent both wear and stress and to also keep enough variety of pinnablility on any green and every green on the course (this unfortunately is precisely where those one or few radical "anomolie" greens become a problem).

At that point take the general and consistent green speed on the course up to various speeds while at the same time thoroughly testing each and every green and every single pinnable rotation point from any and every part of every green. I did some of this yesterday at GMGC and even a few of our most complex and sloped and contoured greens (the ones that may be close to being our "anomalies") didn't take more than a half hour to completely test to every pin rotation spot from any part of the green.

Go through the whole course this way at a couple of cut heights (green speeds) to determine if any and every pin spot on every green remains at least just at the point of "reasonable" playability.

Looked at another way I've come to call this process "The Steve Curry Greenspeed Barometer". The point on some green you want to keep as pinnable and playable (from any other spot on that green) that you know goes over the top first on the course basically sets the barometer for the "reasonable maximum" green speed on the course for the rest of time.

At that point and at that speed (cut height)  (and stimp that cut height if you want for simply a reference) you've got your "reasonable maximum" green speed and my advice would also be to try to prevail upon the club to put that "reasonable maximum" cut height or stimpmeter reading in the bylaws never to be exceeded in the future, because basically the membership doesn't need to be concerned with the stimpmeter or its reading ever again, and certainly not in ever increasing it, and it serves the utlimate purpose of never having to consider touching the courses's slopes and contours and green character in the future.

That's not so hard, it's just a matter of dedicating yourself to doing the investigative work and going out there and getting it done and determined and having it legislated!

At that point the club can pretty much just work with a consistent cut height (never to be lowered), or green maintenance program for the future and you can also just forget about the stimpmeter forever except as a reference to where you are only against your own course's "reasonable maximum" and not some other course's.

As an insurance policy also do what I plan to do at my club. Once that "reasonable maximum" greenspeed has been determined and its been agreed on never to exceed it go back out there and shoot all the grades on all the greens comprehensively and put that in the records or bylaws too. If in the future some joker tries to tell you some slope or contour has changed and consequently the green needs to be redesigned just go back out there again and shoot that contour again and you can tell him he's wrong! If he's right, fix it to what it was when you determined your "reasonable maximum" green speed in the first place.

[Rick Shefchik]

I recently had a conversation about green speeds with a friend who is an outstanding amateur. He wants to see his older, traditional private course rebuild two of its greens because they are currently unplayable at 11 or 12 on the stimpmeter. Because he plays in statewide amateur events all summer on courses with very fast greens, he feels his course doesn't prepare him for top-level competition.

I sympathize with him -- he's got specific goals in mind, and he needs fast greens to achieve his goals. But I also sympathize with those who like their courses the way they are and don't want to see all greens flattened to the point that they can sustain speeds that are only truly necessary for the very best players.

The most significant -- and, you could argue, most damaging -- changes in golf are all being driven by a very small minority of players.

[TEPaul]

Rick:

I don't think ridiculously high green speeds are being driven by a small group of players and most of the ones I've seen aren't good players at all.

This whole phenomenon really amazes me. This year we just took our greens up about a foot in speed to around 11 max some of the time and to my shock and amazement almost all the members seem to just love it. I really can't figure this out. The greens are about 5 times more complicated and intense to play and putt at that foot increase! I used to play a lot of  tournament golf and I know what fast and intense greens are on a course and I just can't believe they really like this better but it's been going on now for a number of months and they really do seem to like it.

I don't know what they're doing about their scores or if they even care but they have to be going up bigtime.

We've apparently found our "reasonable maximum" green speed on our course and I plan to ask that we cap it here. It just happens to be a bit higher than I thought they'd accept!

Experience tells me most amateur golfers don't recognize very well what a true stimp reading plays and putts like. If we hit our "reasonable maximum" right around 11 they probably think it's about 14 and are telling each other that!