A Fairway and Green Firmness meter, good or bad

[JohnV]

In Bradley Klein's article on the USGA Annual Meeting in this week's Golfweek, he says:

The USGA is in the process of developing a new device capable of measuring the relative firmness of greens and fairways, Rugge said.  The device will allow for quantification of a previously unmeasured variable affecting golf ball distance and also could help achieve uniformity in turf conditions, akin in some respect to the impact of the Stimpmeter on golf course maintenance."

Do you think this would be good or bad?  Would it lead to the firmer and faster conditions that many here like or would it just lead to another "arms" race akin to the increase in green speeds to ridiculous extremes?

[James Bennett]

It will be good and bad.

It will be good, because it will provide a Club with an independent measure of how the course is playing, from hole to hole, season to season and year to year.  This can assist with under/over irrigation and drainage issues.  As golfers, we have trouble remembering last week, let alone comparisons with last year, or three years ago etc.

It could be bad because of the arms race.  A new standard for firmness/pace of fairways might evolve.  We have already seen the change to fairway playing characteristics resulting from the new hybrid couch fairway grasses (bermuda) coupled with firm fairways changes.  Slopes are more difficult to deal with in these situations than with older couch types that gave up less run.  

Hopefully, the measures won't try to compare soft-grass fairways with warm-season couch/bermuda fairway firmness/speed.  That would nearly be like comparing tennis court surfaces (clay vs hard-court vs grass).  Perhaps they might recognise a wide range of speed outcomes as 'reasonable', with a narrower range on 'firmness'.

[TEPaul]

I think it will be more than great!! It might actually get people thinking about the fact that golf both can and probably should be played two ways in America---in the air and on the ground!!

You know what JohnV---I have a sneaking suspicion that this just might have something to do with this whole distance issue. I'm told by some pretty well positioned people that distance restrictions in the future are going to include everything, including player strength and the rollout of the ball!

[Don_Mahaffey]

Assuming this new instrument measures firmness on a scale similar to how the stimp measures with the higher the number the firmer the ground, you can expect supts. to be under pressure to make the stimp number high and the firmness number low.

[A_Clay_Man]

And gives the true whiner someone, or something else, to blame for his own lack of awareness.

Honestly, how many golfers on any given day ask what the stimp is? And when they do, at most courses, the look they should get from the person they ask, should be priceless.

[Steve Lang]

 

can't wait to see the COR ratings for turf.. oh, by the way, was the sun out, or was it windy, or did it rain three days ago, and did the super have a bad night?

are they going to use geo-statistics and report uncertainty?

how do you infer ~160 acres or ~ 7,000,000 square feet of turf conditions over a course accurately or 75,000-100,000 square feet of greens with a "device".. you're going to need quite a large sampling there..

I've got a suggestion.. why not have the super and pros for a course go out and hit some balls together and discuss the merits of playing options and how to vary and sustain them  throughout the year!  make them do it every morning! and afternoon on a sampling of holes.. and keep it in a course journal.. now that would create something worth keeping to optimize things..

[Peter Galea]

This technology has been around for a while.
http://www.turf-tec.com/PNlit.html
I think a good indicator of firmness is a slight tinge of brown in the fairways.

[Mark Brown]

Sounds good to me. It can't get any worse where I am.