Ross's sand greens, how they turned into grass...

[Jon Heise]

Ive thought of starting this discussion for a while now, but Ive never really figured out how to start it.  I'll just post it and see what happens... as I'm looking for someone to fill in that blanks with some good 'ol facts.  Maybe this'll be a history lesson on sand greens...

From the GCA discussion piece on Southern Pines GC:

Then consider the Southern PinesGolf Club which is part of the Elk’s Club. Opened as a nine holer in 1906 (golfers at the time played a par three hole from a tee left of today’sfourth green down to near today’s fifteenth tee, makingfor a nine hole loop), Ross extended it to eighteen holes in the early 1920s. The course reached its full potentialwhen Ross’s sand greens were converted to grass by Angus Maples in the late 1930s.

It is my understanding that Pinehurst No. 2's greens were sand until 1935 or 1937, when Ross built them to what they are today.

Ive seen and played other Ross courses in the north, Oakland Hills North and South, Grosse Ile G&CC, Western G&CC.  These were all built in the late 1910's early 1920's and have some of the most wonderful, wild, greens I've ever seen.  Surely he did more great greens and many other courses in the north at about that time- they were never sand greens. 

I'm interested in the sand greens of his southern courses.  The image I seem to have stuck in my head is that most of those courses, even his great ones throughout the Carolinas are flat, square and boring, only later to be totally created and brought to glory with the new technologies to grow grass.  Did his great courses in the south 1900-1930 have the great shapes and slopes that his northern grassed greens have?  Obviously he was producing those very greens in the north at that time.

Though it's not a very focused question at this point, Im sure there's some people here that'll understand.  I think Im kind of looking for a timeline on his green building technologies here...

[TEPaul]

Jon:

Your question may not seem focused to you but if your first sentence is historically correct, which it very well may be, I think your question is very focused. I sure don't have the answer.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jon,
Here's a bit of info for you:
http://www.tuftsarchives.org/2008/10/sand-green/

another Pinehurst green, although where I don't know. It looks somewhat sloped:


and an ad featuring Pinehurst #2


I've never played on one, but given the composition of clay and oiled sand along with rolling and dragging, I bet they were fairly fast.

[Mark Luckhardt]

Sand greens are how the game was originally played, and should hold a place in my heart forever. Luckily there is a property near my home called Bruce Beach Golf Club, built in 1907, and the oldest course in the county, that still has its original 9 sand green holes untouched.  Tee boxes are 8 x 8 dirt boxes elevated about 1.5'.  Bunkers are native dune sand and the whole course is cut weekly to one level. 
They are rebuilding/expanding the greens in the next year, and are keeping them sand, just taking them back out to where they used to be. Wonderful place, and it is pasture golf, at its finest.
I've also played some fine sand greens in Saskatchewan in my early years, water is scarce on the prairies.

The sand greens at Bruce Beach are not very sloped and I doubt ever were, to avoid wash outs I assume. I bet in the Carolinas Ross did put severe slopes on these greens in a slightly more moderate climate.

[Peter Galea]

Weren't Pinehurst's greens originally clay with sand sprinkled on them every so often to slow them down?

[Sven Nilsen]

Thought this was as good a place as any to add this in.

The Jan. 1916 edition of Golf Illustrated contained the following short report on work Ross was doing on the No. 3 Course at Pinehurst.  In short, he was creating undulations around the greens to make the approaches to the clay surfaces more interesting.

We had quite a bit of conversation about the Pinehurst greens last summer during the lead up to the U.S. Open, but I think this basic fact slipped through the cracks.  Namely, that the surrounds of many of the greens at Pinehurst were directly due to the benign nature of the original putting surfaces (I suspect the same work took place on the No. 2 course as well).

I'm not looking to restart the debate as to the history of the crowns on the greens and the creation of many of the falloffs, but rather to note that we often forget the process of evolution, and in this particular case that the greens back then at Pinehurst "worked" very differently than how we think of them today.