Firm and fast and most greens having open fronts

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

are as important as improved efficiancy of costs in keeping the game from shrinking any more. I also make the contention this is as important to help the game bridge the next 15 years as the world economy and over supply of courses in most parts of the world play out. Golf is a hard expensive game. That cannot be changed but it can be managed and improved upon. Firm fast courses where the ground game is a viable option is good as we all believe. It also helps make a potential double or triple bogie a bogie as well. It makes the game just more fun and easier to enjoy. I also believe improved practice facilities and making them pleasurable to be along with promoting 9 hole rounds help important. Our society is more fast moving and significantly more ADD.

[Tom_Doak]

Tiger,

I agree completely, and wrote as much back in 1991, anticipating a day when maintenance budgets would be scaled back.  But I never anticipated they would get to last year's levels before the correction.  I really do wonder how many golfers will be able to live with more realistic conditioning in the new austerity era.

[Bill_McBride]

It's been great to see some brown and a few weeds lately.

How do we let the golf public at large know that's not only okay but desirable?

[Tom_Doak]

It's been great to see some brown and a few weeds lately.

Bill,

The last time I was out at The Sheep Ranch, one of my drives wound up in a patch of knotweed.  I learned the name at Cornell, and remember that I used to find it often in my younger years as a player.  But when I saw it at The Sheep Ranch I realized that I had not seen any of it on a golf course for at least ten years, and maybe twenty!  I was both amazed, and saddened.

[Pete Lavallee]

But in actual fact F&F makes golf harder; just how do we sell that aspect of the new maintenance meld? Firmer, faster courses will not have a spongy green pillow to hit one's hybrid and wedges off, I don't see how a rock hard approach into the green will offset this to the casual golfer. We experienced this some years ago at Barona Creek. Due to drought conditions the Tribe made the concious decision to irrigate only tees and greens, keeping water in reserve to fight any possible fires on the Reservation. Hitting woods and wedges off these conditions was indeed challanging. Green fees were slashed to $35 and I was the only one out there; but hey, I grew up on a course with no fairway irrigation and was in heaven. It seemed to me everybody else thought they were in hell.

[Matt_Ward]

Frankly, those players who will be turned off by the new turf conditions were not really golfers in the purest sense. They simply played for the conditioning / presentation dynamic -- not really connected to what the game needs to be and that includes factoring in the bounce of the ball.

The toughest areas for that to sell will be in the northeast where far too many courses are way over-watered and play so incredibly slow because of the veal cutlet size divots one routinely takes when playing.

Pete's concluding sentence sums that up best.

[Jerry Kluger]

Tiger: There were lots of courses built in the 1950s and 1960s when irrigation systems were not nearly as sophisticated as they are today and the architects designed the courses with firm and fast conditions in mind.  Many of the courses have upgraded the systems and the courses no longer play f & f.  This has happened at my home course and many others in my area and when I point out that most greens allow for a runup shot because of this, the guys I am playing with are happy that the course no longer plays that way.  I should note that they also love all the pine trees that were planted in that era.

[Bill_McBride]

It's been great to see some brown and a few weeds lately.

Bill,

The last time I was out at The Sheep Ranch, one of my drives wound up in a patch of knotweed.  I learned the name at Cornell, and remember that I used to find it often in my younger years as a player.  But when I saw it at The Sheep Ranch I realized that I had not seen any of it on a golf course for at least ten years, and maybe twenty!  I was both amazed, and saddened.

My one experience with the Sheep Ranch - actually second because we wandered it a bit in 2001 before it was built - I did not think of it as "manicured."  A few weeds were not out of place.

In May I took some friends to Mike Young's Longshadow, where the owner has deferred a lot of maintenance but the greens and fairways were good.  The next day we played the lush Great Waters at Reynolds Plantation.  My friends, who belong to a pretty lush course in Santa Barbara, preferred Longshadow "because the holes were more interesting and varied."  The conditioning didn't make the decision for them.  There is hope!

[JMEvensky]

Tiger: There were lots of courses built in the 1950s and 1960s when irrigation systems were not nearly as sophisticated as they are today and the architects designed the courses with firm and fast conditions in mind.  Many of the courses have upgraded the systems and the courses no longer play f & f.  This has happened at my home course and many others in my area and when I point out that most greens allow for a runup shot because of this, the guys I am playing with are happy that the course no longer plays that way.  I should note that they also love all the pine trees that were planted in that era.

Our 2 memberships must be twins separated at birth.

[Norbert P]

Tiger B,

   I agree. View askewed another way:  if a designer displaces a runup approach with a bunker face or inordinatly raised green, then the maintenance practice shifts to allow and receive the aerial shot only. I.e., a softer, probably wetter (irrigated $$$) green.  I suppose the green could be mowed higher and stimped lower but the goal of consistency of green speeds would negate that practice.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Tom, Bill and guys. I know this has been discussed from different points of view many times. Some of this comes from recent rounds with Bob. We are both on the mend. It reminded me of the true pleasures one gets from the game. Outside of a wonderful time shared with a friend in such an idealic setting, a solidly hit shot on a course that allows both good and not so good things to happen as you see it roll along. Laughing about the amount of money p------d away fon hole redo with no concept of future maintenance costs taken into consideration. Mike Young as well as Tom and many of the other architects on here so get how that figures into design. This does not have to be a world of extremes, just have a course designed to move costs up and down as economic conditions allow for.

[Don_Mahaffey]

The idea that a maintenance budget reduced by 10-20% automatically results in bad conditions is not true. Yes, choices have to be made, but if those choices are grounded in what is best for the game, they are not very hard to make.