Why did square greens disappear ? Have any been built lately ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

I saw some interesting picutes of NLE's with square fronting, flanking and rear bunkers adjacent to square greens.

Why were these features eliminated ?

And, why aren't any being built ?

Please don't bring up mowing difficulty, as mowing works well on square and rectangular tees, so larger greens shouldn't be a problem

[Joe Hancock]

Pat,

Does the economics of walk mowing greens count in your "mowing difficulty" criteria?

I suspect many courses bailed out on high maintenance mowing when golf wasn't quite so rich.

Low end: 1 person on a triplex for 1.75 hours/ day x wage= inexpensive

High end: 6 people on walkers for 3 hours/ day= expensive

Those are real life examples from my experiences in golf course maintenance.

Joe

[Joel_Stewart]

Excellent question Pat and my guess is they stopped building them sometime in the late 1930's or early 40's.

Olympic didn't have any square greens but a few of the holes did have at least one side that was square.  Its hard to believe that lazy mowing patterns eliminated the straight sections.

[Patrick_Mucci]

JHancock,

A square green doesn't mean that there isn't ample fringe area to make the turns on a triplex, but I see your point.

If they can mow elevated square and rectangular tees with triplexes, I don't see why they can't mow square greens with triplexes

Courses continue to use walking mowers.
Many say the quality of the putting surfaces are improved with walking versus riding mowers, but cost is a budget factor that each club has to consider.

[DPL11]

Pat,
Most of the old classics have lost their original green shapes in the 70's, when speed became more important than quality of cut and architectural integrity. The problem doesn't lie in area to turn a mower, it has to do with cutting the cleanup pass. Sharp turns, such as a rectangular shapes, can't be accomplished with a triplex. The only way to achieve this with a triplex is to walk mow the cleanups.
These shapes haven't been lost, they are still there, they just need to reclaimed. Most expansive rough areas accross the back portions of old greens used to be green. It is easy enough to tell where these lines start and stop be probing to match soils types. Then all you have to do is strip this rough out and replace with greens height sod. Preferably grown on site with aerification plugs from existing greens, so the sod matches native turf.

DPL11

[Patrick_Mucci]

DPL11,

How do you explain the sharp cuts at the corner of the tees, which are mowed to 90 degrees in four seperate areas ?

[DPL11]

Pat,
This is usually done with walkers also, but can be done with a triplex. You have to mow into each corner with the outside reel of the triplex in both directions. It is very abusive due to the weight of the machine and obviously the tire marks. I don't see a whole hell of alot of courses mowing 90 degree angles with triplexes, but I've done it. If you did this to greens height turf, it probably wouldn't look so hot after a few mowings. The problem in the 70's was that not a whole hell of alot people gave a sh#*, and speed demands were not so high.

DPL11

[Patrick_Mucci]

DPL11,

When you reference "speed" are you talking about labor or pace issues ?

It's been my limited experience that walkers can produce higher green speeds then triplexes, especially over time and on contoured greens.

[DPL11]

Pat,
No doubt, better cut and speed will be obtained with walkers. I was referring to speed pertaining to labor costs.
Most of the old square greens we are discussing weren't perfect 90 degree angles anyway. Some were, but most were a rounded square. They were still too tight an angle for a triplex. Alot of loss was also due to operators afraid to scalp the edges, which over the course of 50-100 years can be quite significant, as you can imagine.

DPL11

[Joe Hancock]

Keep in mind that triplex green mowers weren't commercially available until 1970, plus or minus a couple years.

Joe

[DPL11]

Joe,
I mentioned the 70's & triplexes in my earlier posts. Staying away from the edges, afraid of scalping, also happens with a walker. This was also my personal pet peave when I was a super, but when you are paying people just above minimum wage, it is hard ones who care.  

DPL11

[noonan]

It is my understanding you should not do a clean up cut around the edge of a green daily. This would allow triplex mowing and every other day or every third day clean up with a walker.

JK

[Joe Hancock]

In trying to keep this on topic, I reread Pat's question.

I'm sure there were many reasons why square greens disappeared. I have to believe aesthetis may have been one of them.

I know, square is the in thing on "classic" course tees. I love the look. I feel it works in large part because the squared off tee area is generally void of elevation changes.

Take the straight lines to a highly contoured green, however, and I think it becomes less appealing to the eye. The straight lines distort at any angle except straight on with the line. Not that GCA should ever be artistic....

I'm just guessing here, Pat. I really don't have a conclusive, historical answer.

Joe

[DPL11]

Noonan,
Years ago we did a cleanup pass almost everyday. When green heights started to get lower we started skipping the cleanups, due to excessive wear, to every other day or every third.

A quick example, in 1986 we were mowing at 5/32" or 0.156" (low at that point in time), now I know guys that are mowing at 0.085" or lower. Not too much margin for error. Thats almost half the mowing height in 17 years. In 1986 we didn't think that mowing would get much lower than 5/32".

Sorry to get off topic a little, but I just wanted to show how much course maintenance has evolved in the last 20 years, and so have the golf courses. Change is not always for the better.

DPL11

[Tommy_Naccarato]

As many courses that are hand mowing greens these days, there is no excuse for it. In fact, what better way to NOT lose you mowing patterns or at least help keep them somewhat accurate!

Here are two images both from Doanld Ross Courses that shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, as well as my priviledge to take pictures at them!

Please notice that since both these images have been taken, TRUE AND HONEST RESTORATION has taken place at these clubs, and these areas shown might very well be reclaimed.


OOOOOPPPPPPPPPPSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How did that get in there?!?!?!?!?!?

[DPL11]

Tommy,

There is no excuse for it, but now people are more aware and what happened in the 70's is done. So fix it!

Once a greens been reclaimed, there are measures that can be taken to make sure it doesn't happen again. The one I recommend to most supers, is to bury a 10ga. wire about 6-8" deep around the edge of the new or reclaimed green. Then a trip with a metal detector and a paint can every spring ensures that the same doesn't happen again.

DPL11

[Patrick_Mucci]

Why haven't any square greens been built recently ?

[Joe Hancock]

Apparently, no customers footing the architects bill has asked for them.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat,
Weren't a few square greens built at Black Creek?

Perhaps their (sq.greens) association with early and rudimentary courses is one reason they have lost favor over time.

There are maintenance issues as others have described.
One more to add, we have several that have shrunk
to circles over time and we have lost, as estimated by
George Bahto, about 40% of our green surfaces, overall.
Maintenance contends that mowing these areas to green
height is an everyday process vs. every third day mowing
them as surrounds. Trying to argue against that logic is worse than pulling teeth.  
   
 .

[T_MacWood]

Pat
Just about every architect during the so-called golden age condemned geometirc features--cop bunkers, rectangular fairways and square greens. Victorian architecture was synonimous with bad architecture...should we bring it back?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom MacWood,

Why then, did square and rectangular tees survive and prosper ?

Didn't CBM create square greens at Chicago GC ?

I think you go to extremes when you ask if we should return to the geometric period.  

Are you opposed to continuing to maintain squared greeens as such, and are you proposing or endorsing their eradication ?

Jim Kennedy, JHancock, DPL 11,

It would seem that courses that continue to mow with walkers wouldn't have the difficulty associated with the bulkier triplexes.

Is the mowing away from sharp edges, and the mowing in circular patterns a product of minimum wage quality ?

[TEPaul]

Pat:

This is an interesting question and in my opinion there're probably about three legitimate ways of looking at it.

1. Maintenanace practices:
There're many good posts above from supers and such about the problems of mowing square corners and such and the problems with cutting into aprons or collars, the problems with "turning" mowers etc and hence the inclination to always err in mowing on the inside and the rounding out of greenspace over time due to that alone.

2. Architectural aesthetic:
There's no question what Tom MacWood said above is true to a huge degree. Things such as square greens (with squared corners) was a style and look of the very early era (before the "Golden Age" actually) from the pre-teens to around the WW1. This was architecture influenced in many ways by the so-called "geometric era" which some such as Macdonald considered an abomination of architectural style. (The overall architectural "lines" of the geometric era was the very thing that made Macdonald utter the words "the very soul of golf shrieks!") All kinds of geometric forms were used in that very early rudimentary era--ie cone shapes etc but particularly very squared shapes including bunkering and greens.

A growing medium;
Many of these early apparently rudimentary architectural geometric shapes certainly including greens apparently possessed very poor growing mediums and in some cases (depending on the inherent soil structure) simply failed agronomically.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I can't understand why perimeter configuration would have anything to do with agronomic difficulties.

If they rounded the green would it suddenly get healthy ?
I would doubt it.

I can see moving away from the geometric era in general, but that doesn't mean that vestiges of that era should be eradicated, and it would seem to indicate a lack of creativity, or willingness to create a bold or unusual feature on the part of modern day architects, wouldn't you agree ?

[TEPaul]

I feel that the evolution of the architecture of Donald Ross is probably the best to study when it comes to the question of square green shapes and how architecture evolved away from that.

Ross, was very early in American architecture--actually pre-teen in some places. But some of his early pre WW1 courses show very squared greens. LuLu, apparently his first effort in Pennsylvania has aerials that show primarily squared green surfaces almost everywhere on the course. That was around 1914. My own course (1916 Ross) shows the beginning of something interesting--eg some square greens and other greens that were primarily square but with "flared corners". This to me was simply Ross slowly evolving and becoming more "artisitic" in his architectural style--and to me anyway that is particularly interesting!

These greens, on ground, show something even more interesting. At LuLu some of those old squared green surfaces simply flowed along natural grade (and one might begin to suspect the quality of the subsurface growing medium on greens like that). Basically they were probably trying to grow grass on the site's natural soil makeup and depend on sheet drainage primarily. Many of these old greens apparently failed for a variety of reasons and agronomics back in that era would be pretty shocking to us today.

Then the so-called "push-up" green began to emerge more and become more sophisticated and multi-form in both shape (vertically and from the air) as well as its growing medium and internal drainage characteristics.

To truly understand what was going on back then in green characteristics, and how and why things were evolving one needs to look carefully into the ideas and work on green construction of a semi-genius by the name of Fredrick Taylor!

Ironically, GMGC has just gone through a restoration and reclamation of their original greenspace and many of those old original Ross square green shapes (as well as the greens with the "flared corners" off of squared shapes) have now been restored!

The thinking on our restoration committee was maybe they were a bit rudimentary and geometric looking because Ross himself was sort of just emerging from that geometric era but we simply said that's the way it was then because our course WAS designed so early so we decided just to go with it and restore it!!

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

Most of the squared greens that I've seen were elevated, and bordered by rectangular bunkers at one or more of their sides.

The elevation might have been for drainage purposes.

But, the question remains:

Why haven't any modern day architects created squared greens, especially with the advances in agronomy and maintainance techniques ?