Green speed - Firmness - Turf health * A Venn Diagram Consideration

[John Connolly]

How much overlap can exist amongst these 3 elements?

Can mutual inclusivity exist and to what degree?

[Joe Hancock]

Task number one for this experiment: Assign values to each criteria.

Green speed- we can do that
Firmness- we can do that too
Turf health- No can do. Everyone is going to identify healthy grass by it's color. Not scientific, but that's all we have it seems.

I'm going to think about how to move this tread forward. It is a lot more important to the game and to golf architecture than it outwardly appears.

Thanks for screwing up my night, John.

[JESII]

John,

How about a range of green speeds from say 6 or 7 feet (can they be slower?) to 13 or 14?

Some metric for firmness like - My ball just buried 2 inches deep in the green up to My ball just bounced over the flag into the back bunker

Health - something along the lines of root depth and/or how long the greens could go without water...or something...?

Good thread idea!

[John Kavanaugh]

Firm enough not to show paw prints, fast enough to repel do doo, and heathy enough to eat.  Happy dog, happy greens.

[Joe Hancock]

Firm enough not to show paw prints, fast enough to repel do doo, and heathy enough to eat.  Happy dog, happy greens.

Thread killer.......

[John Kavanaugh]

I hate dogs, don't much care for supers, but love great greens. If that means letting a guy take his dog to work, I'm all for it.

[Peter Pallotta]

It is indeed a valuable thread, and a couple of heavyweights have already joined in. So why does the phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" come to mind?

Here's a guess: it's because history has tried to teach us over and over again in every area of human endeavour that the spirit of the law soon becomes the letter of the law, and that these soon become the rules -- rules that a few try to enforce on the many for no better reasons than power and profit.
Peter

[Joe Hancock]

Peter,

Help me out here, for I am but a simple man. Are you saying that money and the desire for it has influenced how golf courses are maintained/ presented?

Humbly inquisitive,

Joe

[John Connolly]

Before a serious effort at quantification occurs here, let me throw some proportionality assumptions and see if there can at least be consensus on the relationship of the variables being evaluated. Would respondents agree, disagree or chose to qualify these assumptions:

1 - Green speeds and firmness are proportional
2 - Firmness and turf health are not correlated - an R2 of 0.0
3 - Green speed and turf health are inversely proportional

And what drives the question is an interest in knowing how the pursuit of a quantitative increase in any of these variables (ie faster, firmer, healthier) impacts the other two and, more importantly, how often and to what degree? More simply put, how tightly are these variables coupled? Or should I say, "tripled"?

[Peter Galea]

Need to add a couple more circles to the diagram.
The superintendent, the powers to be to back him or her, and Mother Nature.

This is truly when a super must be on the greens every day.
Cant keep them on the edge just viewing from the truck.

"A superintendent that doesn't play golf is like a chef who doesn't taste the soup before it leaves the kitchen" ~ L.E. Norman.

[Andrew Hardy]

Perhaps naming this thread "The many stereotypes of a Superintendent" makes far more sense?

[Adam Lawrence]

Before a serious effort at quantification occurs here, let me throw some proportionality assumptions and see if there can at least be consensus on the relationship of the variables being evaluated. Would respondents agree, disagree or chose to qualify these assumptions:

1 - Green speeds and firmness are proportional

Not really. Green speed is primarily determined by height of cut while firmness, obviously, is determined by the amount of moisture in the root zone. The tour proves week in week out that you can have incredibly fast greens that are soft.

[SL_Solow]

Grass type?  Drainage?  Subsurface type?  Climate?  Time of year?  Root depth?  Budget?  Would any of these variables impact on the correlation you are seeking?  Fast and soft is possible as noted.  So is "slow" and firm.  Think about a shag carpet on a cement floor.  I have played on greens that reacted similarly.  Where does smoothness factor into the equation.  Another question that shows why greenkeeping is so difficult and fascinating and why, in my opinion, the greenkeeper is the most important employee at any club.  A good greenkeeper can optimize the architecture while a bad one can achieve the opposite result.

[John Connolly]

Adam and Shelly,

Great responses and those hit on the principle question regarding the proportionality between green speed and firmness. Your concordant responses lend weight to the probability the two are weakly correlated as variables. And reflecting on my own playing experiences, I'd say I've played on fast greens that were soft. Shelly, clearly there are other variables in play, as you've suggested. I'm painting with a pretty broad brush, admittedly.

OK, next proportionality. Turf health and firmness. For firm playing conditions generally enjoyed by golfers (not a baked out muni course that's rock hard), are these 2 variables always/never/frequently related?

[Joe Hancock]

OK, next proportionality. Turf health and firmness. For firm playing conditions generally enjoyed by golfers (not a baked out muni course that's rock hard), are these 2 variables always/never/frequently related?

Always. The resultant structure deriving from healthy turf is a real factor in firmness.

Joe

[JMEvensky]

OK, next proportionality. Turf health and firmness. For firm playing conditions generally enjoyed by golfers (not a baked out muni course that's rock hard), are these 2 variables always/never/frequently related?

Always. The resultant structure deriving from healthy turf is a real factor in firmness.

Joe

Wouldn't healthy turf trump everything else?

[Jason Topp]

I think you need to add green slope to the diagram. 

A boring green can become very interesting at high green speeds whereas a slopy green can be interesting at much lower speeds.

[SL_Solow]

I am not a greenkeeper although I spend a lot of time with them.  An expert like Don Mahaffey or one of our other resident Supers would be better qualified.  However I think we are oversimplifying things again.  First you have to agree on a definition of healthy turf.  The issue of turf color will rear its ugly head in this discussion.  Then you must consider the time of year, the type of turf, its purpose (green, fairway rough?), the climate, the soil, presence of disease or pests etc.  At that point, you can begin to consider what is possible within the constraints of the available budget.. Its not as easy as saying " I want healthy turf that plays firm and fast with greens that stimp at X.  But try to tell that to some  "expert" club members.

[Steve Okula]

I hate dogs, don't much care for supers, but love great greens. If that means letting a guy take his dog to work, I'm all for it.

That's ironic. I'm a super and golfers piss me off.

Dogs are okay, though.

[Jon Wiggett]

John,

I do wonder what the point is behind such an idea. Any sort of system would be either an inaccurate fudge or an unfathomable mess. Either way it would only ever be detrimental to the game the same as the stimp meter has been.

Jon

[John Connolly]

John,

I do wonder what the point is behind such an idea. Any sort of system would be either an inaccurate fudge or an unfathomable mess. Either way it would only ever be detrimental to the game the same as the stimp meter has been.

Jon

Less of an idea than a question. I just kind of wondered aloud to myself and asked, how do these 3 variables relate to one another? Are they linked in predictable ways (either proportionally or inversely proportionallly) or are they unrelated variables. If you adjust one, what happens to the other two? So from that question a 3 set Venn diagram image popped into my head.

For me personally, I consider it a worthy exercise because I'd like to see how those with experience and knowledge view the inter-relationships. It wasn't never intended to be a hardcore quantitative tool because, yes, I agree an unfathomable mess awaits. I'm not sure the analysis lends itself to a metric of any kind, so I wouldn't worry about a stimp-like measurement. But I must admit, I'm a fan of trying to quantify situations when feasible. I disagree that the stimpmeter has been detrimental to the game, by the way. It's merely a tool. People's attention to its readings is another matter. "Stimp readings don't kill greens, people do", if you will.

[Andrew Hardy]

No matter what level of golf course. No matter where in the world. There is no greater factor in all of this conversation than the weather. The weather and the decisions made during various different periods of weather determine what your "Venn Diagram" will look like.

[Craig Sweet]

budget...budget....budget.....It begins...and ends with $$$$

[John Connolly]

I am not a greenkeeper although I spend a lot of time with them.  An expert like Don Mahaffey or one of our other resident Supers would be better qualified.  However I think we are oversimplifying things again.  First you have to agree on a definition of healthy turf.  The issue of turf color will rear its ugly head in this discussion.  Then you must consider the time of year, the type of turf, its purpose (green, fairway rough?), the climate, the soil, presence of disease or pests etc.  At that point, you can begin to consider what is possible within the constraints of the available budget.. Its not as easy as saying " I want healthy turf that plays firm and fast with greens that stimp at X.  But try to tell that to some  "expert" club members.

My definition would be based on agronomical descriptors. In January of 2015, a horticulturist blogged:
"a healthy turf would appear green, hydrated, growing at a desirable rate and showing no visible injury"

What he then goes on to concede is that truly healthy turf is not really what golfers want. They want the turf that's a bit dehydrated and stressed. As I've said before, brownish turf, for all its playability, is chlorophyll deficient and not the picture of ideal botanical health. So the super's charge is to walk that stress line the best he/she can. I'm sure supers everywhere would consider their job easier of they could treat the course as a turf nursery - soak it and keep golfer's off it. But they need to push turf get ideal turf.

For purposes of this crazy Venn idea, I was speaking of turf for greens. What seems to be crystallizing in this overly simplified model is that turf health, albeit necessarily compromised to some degree (at least in the truest biologic and botanical sense), is potentially sufficient in the setting of desirable firm conditions. The third leg, green speed, can be ramped up in both healthy and unhealthy settings - and too much speed over too long a period of time can be imposed on only on greens that are bionic, and funded with a maintenance budget that is very fat.

Oakmont's green speeds are are fast not because they know something no one else does. They just have a ton of capital.

[Michael Felton]

For those of you who don't already know this, I'm about to make it abundantly clear that I know not of what I speak...

Now that's out of the way, I can see how turf health and green speed would be forever bouncing back and forth. Healthy turf would I think enable the greenkeeper to cut the grass shorter and make the greens faster. the shorter grass then making the turf less healthy, so the grass has to be allowed to grow more, making the greens slower, but the turf healthier. Rinse and repeat.

On another note, when I was growing up, my club had very firm greens at times. Pitching wedge landing front third from the fairway wouldn't stop on the green, even with a balata ball. They rolled at maybe 8 on the stimpmeter on a good day. More likely 7-7.5. Conversely I have played other places where you can back up a 3 wood, but they run well above 10. I don't think firmness has much to do with green speed. Look at Open Championship venues, where sometimes it's bone hard (Muirfield a couple of years ago), but the greens aren't that quick - they can't be lest the wind blows.