[Bob_Huntley]

Has anyone come across the fact that so many renovations require what we have come to call, an "interesting green complex."

The work generally calls for an increase in the size of the green but the new contouring and concommitant green speeds allow for far fewer hole placements than were formerly available.

I have noticed this more and more on one of my home courses
and I understand there might be a move afoot to rectify the situation.

Bob

[Bill Brightly]

I don't see how enlarging the green can REDUCE the number of pinnable locations. It can only increase them, or at worst, leave them unchanged.

Green speed is a whole diffferent matter.

[Peter Pallotta]

Bob
can you share more details/thoughts on your particular experience?

I ask because my first reaction was to wonder if the fewer pin placements were so much of a concern on a course that's not hosting tournaments or getting a very large amount a play. In other words, my first reaction was to assume that the 'advantages' of larger, quicker and more contoured greens wouldn't be off-set by any newly-creatred disadvantages.

Are the fewer pin positions simply making the holes less fun to play, providing less variety day-in-and-day-out, and limiting strategic options/interest?

Thanks
Peter

[Bob_Huntley]

I don't see how enlarging the green can REDUCE the number of pinnable locations. It can only increase them, or at worst, leave them unchanged.

Green speed is a whole diffferent matter.

Bill,

Think about a flat surface and an undulating one and you might get it. You cannot plant a pin on a severe slope and if you want to see one let me know.


Perhaps the Nor Cal guys can chime in here.

Bob

Bob

[Mike Benham]

Is the new version of the 16th at Pasatiempo an example?

[Tom Huckaby]

Looking at the pictures of #16 Pasa, that does appear to be the case.  I'll know more after I see it in person tomorrow though.

I do see how this can occur anyway, and it's all due to increased speeds greens can be and are kept at today.  To me it's patently silly to have all these great contours and render them unusable, but that does tend to be occurring.

Sigh... this has been one of the mysteries of modern golf for me for a long time.

TH

[AndrewB]

Looking at the pictures of #16 Pasa, that does appear to be the case.  I'll know more after I see it in person tomorrow though.

What is the verdict on 16 at Pasatiempo?  I was just there and the green is quite severe, so much so that my playing partner commented that he wasn't sure they could put a hole in the middle tier.  I thought they could.  Thoughts?

The hole was cut on the left side of the back tier, which is left-center of the green overall given the angle of the green.  An approach shot that stopped just short of reaching the top level (on the left center of the green) ran all the way back off the front of the green.  A ball that did the same on the right center stayed on the middle tier.  I like the fact that the green's slopes force me to think hard about the type of shot I need to play (trajectory, spin, line), but I haven't played it enough to say whether it's so severe that most misses end up in the same place.

[Lou_Duran]

Mr. Huntley,

Do you think that there might be a disconnect between some architects who look to the Classical Era with its UK roots for guidance and superintendents who must respond to the course owners and customers who demand modern maintenance?  Another possibility is the perceived need to protect par which is more easily accomplished on and around the greens.

Probably due to past surface drainage techniques, if recapturing green areas lost to inexact maintenance practices over the years, unless the architect shaves the down the edges he is not gaining much of anything.  I've seen superintendents mark old green lines and start mowing the grass progressively lower to green height.  It seems like the grasses never match and the new mown areas don't blend in well (so they're seldom used).

[John Kirk]

Bob,

That's a very good point.  I have seen many large new greens which have lots of unpinnable areas.  I suppose a trade off must be made, because severe unpinnable areas in greens also yield interesting putting challenges.

[Dave_Miller]

Has anyone come across the fact that so many renovations require what we have come to call, an "interesting green complex."

The work generally calls for an increase in the size of the green but the new contouring and concommitant green speeds allow for far fewer hole placements than were formerly available.

I have noticed this more and more on one of my home courses
and I understand there might be a move afoot to rectify the situation.

Bob

Bob:
Excellent point.  My club in Florida has very large greens but to their credit when they did the renovation many of the severe slopes were changed in a way that left them challenging but added hole locations. 
Charles River here in Boston has a couple of greens with very severe slopes and the hole locations are limited.   It is obvious that these holes were never intended to be played at todya's cutting heights and speeds.
Best
Dave

[Patrick_Mucci]

Bob,

Sometimes greens get expanded/enlarged into areas that were never intended to be putting surfaces.

I think that's where the expansion can become impractical due to the topos.

[John Moore II]

This is a very possible thing to do. Think of it like this: A green that is 3,000 sqft but is mostly flat, with a few slight undulations may have, lets say, 15 pin placements. While a green that is 10,000 sqft, but with 75% of the green taken up by a 40% grade, may only have 10 useable pin placements. And greens like the 10k sqft one I describe seem to be more prevalent. I must say that I played The President CC today, and on one green I noticed about 10 old hole plugs within a 10ft radius of where today's pin was. But the green had a very large tier in the middle.

[Scott Stambaugh]

Bob,

If you are referring to the most recent rebuild of one of your courses, the greens have very little in common with the ones that were torn up (other than they roll pure.)  But I agree, the bold contours do limit hole locations.  Some of the contouring could warrant 9,000+ sq. ft. greens.

Regarding the restoration of the other course, I feel that because the sizes of the greens did not increase as a whole and contouring became much more severe, hole locations were reduced significantly.  Those greens would be much better if the contours that were created on a 5,000 sq ft area were stretched out to 7,000+ sq ft.  At 10+ speeds (which I know is pretty much the norm there) some of those greens are very limited on what can be done in terms of hole locations-

The back of #2, #4, #9, #11, #12 (!), #15 and #17 are BRUTAL compared to what they were.  If memory serves me well, those squarish green complexes cannot be expanded.

What is going to be rectified?

SS

[Tom_Doak]

Bob:

I think I understand your suggestion, but I'm not sure.  Do you mean that the greens are being redesigned, and more contour is being added, at the same time the green is being enlarged?

Generally, on restorations we don't add contour to the greens, and we'd prefer not to flatten them either, although there are exceptions where we've felt we had to. 

Pasatiempo is not an example of that ... we've tried to preserve those green contours as best we can, even though they are very severe, they're what MacKenzie himself approved.  On the other hand, at The Valley Club, while we reworked a couple of greens to give more cupping space, we also put contour back into the 15th and 18th greens because they had been simply leveled 40 years ago and they didn't feel or play like MacKenzie greens at all.

"Fewer hole placements" is only significant if it means there aren't enough to spread out the wear and tear on a green, don't you think?  Or are you just a proponent of flatter greens?

[Peter Galea]

"Fewer hole placements" is only significant if it means there aren't enough to spread out the wear and tear on a green, don't you think?

Or, less variety for the daily player.

[Jon Wiggett]

I understand that the 'modern' player exspects a certain green speed and this is why many courses have flattened there greens in the past or a planning to do so in the future.

However, there is a reverse side to this. When I work as a Super I always tell my crew and the club that the main goal of the maintenance is to present the course so that it will be most enjoyable to play. This in turn means that if the slopes are to severe for 'modern maintenance', what ever that is, then maybe the maintenance program is wrong.

One last point is that the grass sward before the 1950's was very different to that of today in many cases and this also should be addressed.

[Tim Gerrish]

I find hard to believe that you could expand an existing green and end up with LESS cupping positions.  Some of the original cups must have not been legitimate to begin with.

One reason not stated to date is that you might expand the green for visibility or aesthetics...  such as flashing the green edge onto a back slope to give the player a better sense of depth to the green and not solely for cupping positions.  Just a thought.

[Matthew Mollica]

Bob:

I think I understand your suggestion, but I'm not sure.  Do you mean that the greens are being redesigned, and more contour is being added, at the same time the green is being enlarged?

Generally, on restorations we don't add contour to the greens, and we'd prefer not to flatten them either, although there are exceptions where we've felt we had to. 

Pasatiempo is not an example of that ... we've tried to preserve those green contours as best we can, even though they are very severe, they're what MacKenzie himself approved.  On the other hand, at The Valley Club, while we reworked a couple of greens to give more cupping space, we also put contour back into the 15th and 18th greens because they had been simply leveled 40 years ago and they didn't feel or play like MacKenzie greens at all.

"Fewer hole placements" is only significant if it means there aren't enough to spread out the wear and tear on a green, don't you think?  Or are you just a proponent of flatter greens?

Tom, can you expand on your last 2 lines there. I'm not sure I understand where you're going, but hope you're not saying what I think you're saying...

Matthew

[Jed Peters]

Looking at the pictures of #16 Pasa, that does appear to be the case.  I'll know more after I see it in person tomorrow though.

What is the verdict on 16 at Pasatiempo?  I was just there and the green is quite severe, so much so that my playing partner commented that he wasn't sure they could put a hole in the middle tier.  I thought they could.  Thoughts?

The hole was cut on the left side of the back tier, which is left-center of the green overall given the angle of the green.  An approach shot that stopped just short of reaching the top level (on the left center of the green) ran all the way back off the front of the green.  A ball that did the same on the right center stayed on the middle tier.  I like the fact that the green's slopes force me to think hard about the type of shot I need to play (trajectory, spin, line), but I haven't played it enough to say whether it's so severe that most misses end up in the same place.

I think 16 is the perfect adaption of classic design to the modern game.

I just played it with a pin in on the middle left (looking at it) tier.

Come at the green with a long iron after hitting a bad drive, and you're 3 putting.

I had 115 to the pin and was completely befuddled. The wind was up and in my face, and I wanted to punch a 9 in there. I hit it off the downhill lie a tad thin and hit the green and bounced off the back left.

I tried a full pitching wedge and stiffed it to 6 feet.

Made double on the first ball, lipped out for bird on the other ball.

My dad hit to upper tier , and 3 putted coming back down the hill. Another guy hit middle right tier (college player in the collegiate/member tournament) and 3 jacked.

It's still a great hole and a totally pin-able green.

Now 18 is another story. Bigger, and virtually unpin-able for the tournament at those speeds.

[Adrian_Stiff]

I find hard to believe that you could expand an existing green and end up with LESS cupping positions.  Some of the original cups must have not been legitimate to begin with.

One reason not stated to date is that you might expand the green for visibility or aesthetics...  such as flashing the green edge onto a back slope to give the player a better sense of depth to the green and not solely for cupping positions.  Just a thought.

Tim this might seem a strange anomaly but it could happen if the green was say 6000 sq feet and pretty flat, almost all but the 7 feet around the edge would be 'pinnable', lets say thats 4000 sq feet of pinnable area. A scenario where a club reconstructs a green, the architect
may introduce a different contour pattern, the green may be expanded but because of the 7 foot edge exclusion zone plus areas around contours the green coud say be 7000 sq feet but the pinable areas 3500 sq feet. The way to prove this to yourself is to plot a two tiered green onto graph paper zone off the exclusion zones, which can be 30 feet or more across a tier then count the pinnable bits.
On a side note I try and get 60 pin positions per green as an absolute minimum, each pin position being 40 sq ft. Some greens have got up to 9000 sq ft in order to achieve that, whilst a normal flat 27m x18m green achieves about the same.

[Tim Gerrish]

Adrian,

That makes a lot of sense if you are REBUILDING the green.  I just assumed that the term enlarge means you are expanding the green without necessarily touching the original contours.

Please tell me the 60 pin positions is a typo!!  I believe in variety, but don't you think that is a slight overkill!  I generally establish areas with the size related to the approach shot.  Within the area might be several positions. 

I think 100 SF is a little more like it.  That is only 5 feet on each side of the cup.  Maybe smaller at a private club.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Adrian,

That makes a lot of sense if you are REBUILDING the green.  I just assumed that the term enlarge means you are expanding the green without necessarily touching the original contours.

Please tell me the 60 pin positions is a typo!!  I believe in variety, but don't you think that is a slight overkill!  I generally establish areas with the size related to the approach shot.  Within the area might be several positions. 

I think 100 SF is a little more like it.  That is only 5 feet on each side of the cup.  Maybe smaller at a private club.

Tim - No 60 is correct but remember each is 4 sq metres (40sq ft) so in effect its 240 sq metres or 2400 sq ft of pinning areas, you should never really put the new cup back into the same old hole cup so each area should be 2 metres away from a previous, so a particular area may have 10 pin positions.

[Tim Gerrish]

I know we are metric challenged here in the states, but have worked on a couple metric projects...

4 SM = 171 SF.  The conversation between metric and the "english" method is 3.27, not just adding a zero.  Following this method, to get 60 pin positions of 171 SF the green needs to have 10,260 SF of CUPPABLE area!  Again , I believe in variety and ave built 12,000+ SF greens, but I think your greens are too big...  At $6-9 a SF to build the project is going to die in its track!

I think we are saying about the same thing in regard to area!! 4 SM is just slightly bigger than 100SF!  You just can't have 60 cuppable positions on all your greens.

What happened to the 4500 SF green?  That is 50' x 90' or 15 M x 28 M?

[Adrian_Stiff]

I know we are metric challenged here in the states, but have worked on a couple metric projects...

4 SM = 171 SF.  The conversation between metric and the "english" method is 3.27, not just adding a zero.  Following this method, to get 60 pin positions of 171 SF the green needs to have 10,260 SF of CUPPABLE area!  Again , I believe in variety and ave built 12,000+ SF greens, but I think your greens are too big...  At $6-9 a SF to build the project is going to die in its track!

I think we are saying about the same thing in regard to area!! 4 SM is just slightly bigger than 100SF!  You just can't have 60 cuppable positions on all your greens.

What happened to the 4500 SF green?  That is 50' x 90' or 15 M x 28 M?

Tim, I am saying I look for 240 squared metres of pinnable areas, each being 4 squared metres so it is 60.
Greens average 500 squared metres and I reckon I can build for $50-60 per sq metre.
I dont know where you get your 171 sq feet from. thats nearer 16 squared metres.
Roughly I think you need 180 hole changes per year, or at least allow for that amount, with 60 you return within 1 metre of a previous hole every 120 days, things may be different from country to country and weather patterns and healing times, but in the background you still need to deal with localised compaction problems to maintain healthy turf.
When I design greens the easiest way to check the pinnable areas is to plot the green onto graph paper, delete the edges and severe slopes then count the squares (which are 2 metres by 2 metres).

[Steve Lang]

 

Adrian, in your graphical approach, how did you define "severe" slopes for deletion? 

I ask this as,  in some older, fairly large (4-6000 ft2 plus) greens that I've seen replaced, they were originally sloped down over large runs, typically back to front and had plateaus more often on their perimeters.  Thus, one might be faced with long or short but gradual uphill or downhill putts, and some large breaking crosshill putts.. seemingly allowing cups placements anywhere along the run..

in contrast to plateau/slope/plateau arrangements where placing a cup on the slope or very edge of slope would be akin to putt-putt golf.. thus requiring more separation from the actual slope to allow some run-out space.. reducing pinnable areas by much more than the slopes themselves

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()