Good greens, bad pins...

[Mike_Young]

So maybe the green comm or chair doesn't cut the cup but there are plenty of places where they tell the supt where they want pins.

Oh, that's absolutely true, but I can't say I blame them.  The more I've gotten to know a few green chairmen on a personal level, the more I wonder why anyone would volunteer to absorb members' complaints 24/7.  And pin placements are one of the things members bitch about the most, so it's not hard to see why they would be tempted to micromanage.

TD,I don't blame them either but we probably deal with a different types of green chairs.  Many down here would not know what Merion was or have never heard of Sand Hills.  They think adding a tree to the middle of the fairway would make the course much more difficult.  So putting a pin in the middle of a 12% slope for a member guest is nothing to these guys.

[Kalen Braley]

Mike,


Given the vast majority of my play is on munis, the only thing preventing more travesties in that realm is most of em have pretty flat/boring greens anyways so an iffy pin location is usually no big deal.

[Kyle Harris]

It's not unreasonable to ask an expert player to make a 10-foot putt for par every now and then.

[corey miller]

Mike_Trenham


We purchased EzLocator at St Davids a few years back, it’s really liked by the members.  Since we started using it the hole locations have improved and expanded, they tend to be more out near the edges of the greens.  The pin sheets are terrific as they portray the precise shapes of the greens.  As a longtime member all I need is to see the dots to understand the locations and how challenging the day will be.  There is also an ap for your phone.
















Mike....very interested in your experience at your club at there seems to be a discussion going on at my club.  I would prefer the Superintendent and his crew set up the course the way they want, they have proven to be highly competent.  I don't think members disagree.


My question is to what extent is EZLOCATOR driven by the want/need of members to have the pin sheets?  If players want pin sheets it becomes a heck of a lot easier if you have software?


And then does your club really need pinsheets? Do you have a caddie culture? nature of the terrain?


It sounds like another way to slow play if four people are playing around with an app which I would prefer not to see on the golf course anyway!!!.

[Joe Hancock]

I find this thread depressing, mainly because I feel like I’m being left behind in what I used to know as the game of golf. The game, it seems to me, has devolved into an exercise of swing execution rather than any mental exercise whatsoever. No need to have perception any more; No need to read a green when you have a booklet that spells it our for you; No need to read grain, or play out of sand that is variable; No need to figure out how to play a runner out of a cuppy lie in the fairway. Just perfect a swing, and choose one of your 14 legal weapons and hit it the same way you did on the range.....don’t change a thing!


When golfers are looking down at their phones on the course as much as drivers do on the road, it’s time to accept the title of a dinosaur, and prepare for extinction.

[Don Mahaffey]

Joe,
And the funny thing to me is they want all that fancy stuff at home yet pay $1000s to travel to places like U.K. or Bandon to experience a different type of golf.  But try and bring some of that type of golf to their home course and be prepared to get laughed out of town. 
It’s not that hard to make golf about hitting shots vs playing to a number but it seems everyone wants to act like a tour player when playing at home.  Makes little sense to me.

[Peter Pallotta]

Joe - a discussion for another time and place, and even then I probably couldn't put my thoughts very clearly (even assuming they have any validity), but:
I think that if we want to 'play the game' instead of 'hit shots' we need *less* in our golf courses, not more -- and maybe less of everything, including less sand and less width and even less green contours (as idiotic as that sounds and may in fact be) and complaints about 'bad pins'.
What I see in photos and in reading (between the lines) is a modern trend towards very sophisticated eye candy, so sophisticated in fact that it appears to be/do the very opposite of what it actually is/does -- which is to emphasize hitting shots over playing the game.

[Tom_Doak]

TD,I don't blame them either but we probably deal with a different types of green chairs.  Many down here ... think adding a tree to the middle of the fairway would make the course much more difficult.  So putting a pin in the middle of a 12% slope for a member guest is nothing to these guys.

Yeah, you're not going to last long as green chair at SFGC or Shoreacres doing stuff like that.  You might not even get to stay a member!

[JMEvensky]

The reason the slapdicks do it is because vanity low handicaps want to see actual low handicaps struggle to shoot good scores. Golf's version of schadenfreude.


In my part of the world,the state GA sets pins--and the Green Chair doesn't get consulted. Unfortunately, that just means the GC will try to crank up green speeds and leave 3" Bermuda rough.


Slapdicks never understand that the best player usually wins no matter how the course is set up.

[Mike_Trenham]

Mike_Trenham


We purchased EzLocator at St Davids a few years back, it’s really liked by the members.  Since we started using it the hole locations have improved and expanded, they tend to be more out near the edges of the greens.  The pin sheets are terrific as they portray the precise shapes of the greens.  As a longtime member all I need is to see the dots to understand the locations and how challenging the day will be.  There is also an ap for your phone.
















Mike....very interested in your experience at your club at there seems to be a discussion going on at my club.  I would prefer the Superintendent and his crew set up the course the way they want, they have proven to be highly competent.  I don't think members disagree.


RESPONSE
Our green staff are argonimists and not golfers, it’s helped them set the pins better.  I would bet each greeen superintendent can use it to set pins to fit the way they prefer to prepare the course.


My question is to what extent is EZLOCATOR driven by the want/need of members to have the pin sheets?  If players want pin sheets it becomes a heck of a lot easier if you have software?



RESPONSE
For any task software is always easier and more accurate if it is designed properly.  I would say the task goes from an 8 to a 2 on the hassle factor.


Hitting a few buttons is easier, than sending someone out to pace off each pin and often all the pins are not set until the after the first golfers tee off.  Our locations are selected days ahead, yes occasionally they need to deviate (damage to the selected area) but that’s life.





And then does your club really need pinsheets? Do you have a caddie culture? nature of the terrain?

RESPONSE
We have a caddie culture and a number of blind holes and our share of moron members who don’t agree that you can see the pin on 3 from 1 and the pin on 7 from 5 and the pin on 8 from the range and the pin on 16 from 11.  Members see something like pin sheets at one club and it becomes “every club has this but us”.  This is an economical way to solve a request/demand from many members.  Plus like I said it’s expanded our inventory of locations.


It sounds like another way to slow play if four people are playing around with an app which I would prefer not to see on the golf course anyway!!!.

RESPONSE


We don’t promote the availability of the AP, as as golf geek I found it and put it on my phone.  Most players just ask their caddy to show the the sheet when they are not sure of the pin location.


I think the phone is no different than the paper and I have my phone on most days to check scores on the PGA Tour, MLB or NCAA games.  I rarely look at the numbers as the combination of the pictures, my eyes and years of experience tell me exactly what I am facing.  Also it lets me have one less thing in my pockets as my phone is already always in my back pocket. 


Looking at the AP right now I see the following well known courses among many, Aronimink, Austin Country Club, Builtmore Forest, Baltimore CC, Butler CC, Chicago Golf Club, Country Club of Charleston, Desert Forest, Eagle Point, Exmoor, Frederic’s, Gulph Mils, Hazeltine, Lake Merced, LA Country Club, Old Sandwich, Philadelpia Cricket, Secession, Southern Hills, St George’s, Wade Hampton.