Best playing/golfing challenge or best sward?

[Jon Wiggett]

The greens are steep and lightening fast and that becomes the focus of play because of all the front bunkers.
Favorite hole is the 15th, but that great green is too much at the speed they maintain them at.

Maintenance is stellar

This quote has been taken from another thread but raises an interesting question. I take the first part of the quote as the speed being too fast thus detracting from the playing/golfing challenge. I suspect that the second has more to do with the quality of the sward though doubtless Ian will correct me if I am wrong. By quality of the sward I mean the health of the grasses not quality of playing surface and this is the definition as far as my question is concerned. It is possible to have a poor sward which is a great playing surface.

What is the more important for the golfer as far as green keeping/course maintenance is concerned. The quality of the golfing playing surfaces or the quality of the grass sward?

I am firmly in the camp that I prefer a course that plays well over one that looks good.

Jon

[jeffwarne]

The greens are steep and lightening fast and that becomes the focus of play because of all the front bunkers.
Favorite hole is the 15th, but that great green is too much at the speed they maintain them at.

Maintenance is stellar

This quote has been taken from another thread but raises an interesting question. I take the first part of the quote as the speed being too fast thus detracting from the playing/golfing challenge. I suspect that the second has more to do with the quality of the sward though doubtless Ian will correct me if I am wrong. By quality of the sward I mean the health of the grasses not quality of playing surface and this is the definition as far as my question is concerned. It is possible to have a poor sward which is a great playing surface.

What is the more important for the golfer as far as green keeping/course maintenance is concerned. The quality of the golfing playing surfaces or the quality of the grass sward?

I am firmly in the camp that I prefer a course that plays well over one that looks good.

Jon

[/quote

I think most here are in your camp.

It's interesting to me that it's considered "stellar" maintenance to run greens at speeds considered too fast for their design.
The courses in question was renowned for years for super fast greens.
Now all of their neighbors have super fast greens-in fact I can't think of a course I've played in the last 10 years in the MET area that didn't have super fast greens.
Seems a poor thing to hang one's hat one, or measure their johnson as eventually everyone matches it, which is a whole another problem but I digress....

[Thomas Dai]

Greens at British Open venues often look pretty patchy and discoloured on TV-BBC. Will Mr Sky want uniform coloured greens for their TV Opens?
Atb

[Ryan Coles]

Jon

Not a direct answer but I've always found a quality playing surface really sticks in the memory. Stripes and presentation, less so.

e.g. I don't think I've hit from a better surface than the practice ground at Royal St Georges. Similarly, Birkdale is not really a GCA favourite but the quality of the turf and the feeling from a well struck iron shot are not easily forgotten.

[Brett Hochstein]

Definitely the former for me.  If it were all moss and weeds but I could still keep the ball of the ground if I wanted, then it sounds good to me.  Spending 8 months in Scotland in and around greenkeeping provided plenty of confirmation of my bias to that.