20 years ago our greens were faster!!!

[mike_malone]

  After playing with a few long time members,they said this to me.Frankly i doubt it.It seems that this nostaglia based on personal memory is an impediment to an intelligent discussion about how courses have changed over time.I think notes should be made each year about various course conditions plus some sort of photographic evidence .
 
   I guess it annoys me  somewhat because i was not there 20 years ago,so how can i respond.

[Bob_Huntley]

I bet Oakmont's were as fast then as now.

[mike_malone]

    Bob

     Maybe,maybe not---what would be the evidence other than someone's memory..Watched some of an old Masters last night and they seemed to be hinging on their putts--that at least would be some evidence of different speeds than today.

[Mike_Cirba]

mayday;

Did they also walk 20 miles to the club every day through 6-foot snow drifts to play?  

[THuckaby2]

mayday;

Did they also walk 20 miles to the club every day through 6-foot snow drifts to play?  

Yes, Mike - and it was uphill, both ways.  

Jeez, 20 years ago sounds like ancient history but that's 1983... greens weren't all that different then in general, were they?

TH

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom;

I know I was faster then!!  :-/  

[THuckaby2]

Ah yes, as was I, but we are both so much smarter and more handsome now, Mike.  

TH

[Mike Benham]

Are you using the same grasses on the greens?

Do you have the same superintendent?

Are the trees around the green that provide shade now 20-years older and taller with large canopies?

Have the greens been rebuilt in the past 20-years?

Too many variables including one's own memory to worry about it ...  

[corey miller]

A knowledgeable low handicap friend of mine claims the greens at my home club were faster years ago before I was a member.  I will check with some of the longtime caddies.

[Mike_Trenham]

I do not doubt that they were faster.  

As I remember playing there about 17 years ago and that was the first time I ever experienced the yips.  Remember it clear as day, I was on the putting green warming up and I could do nothing to get the ball near the hole.  As I recall you had at that time a young green superintendent that soon after moved on to a few high profile jobs out west.

I also think that green speeds then were more effected by grain than by mowing height.  I understand a good example of this is Huntington Valley where they are cultivating grain.

[mike_malone]

Mike Benham
   Thanks for your comments.We have regrassed to all bent now--then mix of bent and poa.Several supers since. Trees encroached quite a bit over last 20 years--have cut down many in last 2 years after regrassing.How does tree growth affect green speed?Faster?orSlower?  
    Mike Trenham
     I guess that down grain poa putts may be faster than bent with less grain? I still hear people speak of that super with reverence.His name was Armand Suni(i do not know how to spell his name only ever heard it spoken)I think he went to Cherry Hills and became a bigtime consultant

[Tim_Weiman]

Mayday:

I am familiar with one course where the greens were definitely much faster twenty years ago: Sleepy Hollow, a Stanley Thompson design near Cleveland that is listed among Geoff Shackelford's list of courses where the USGA should spend some money.

How fast were the greens? Truthfully, I don't know the stimpmeter reading, but I do recall having to play recovery shots 90 degrees away from the pin to have any chance getting the shot close. On one of the mid length par 3s, a tee shot hit above the pin was almost certain death - quite easily a four putt when you only started twenty feet away.

As to why they are slower today I can only speculate. My guess is that the volume of play has become so great that the grounds crew has backed off quite a bit on how severe the greens are set up. Sleepy Hollow is still a great course to play for $20ish, but clearly not what it was. Shot placement was absolutely critical back then and that is not really true today.

For what it is worth, by coincidence I just happened to meet someone yesterday and this subject came up. This fellow agreed completely. It's truth, not nostalgia.

[SL_Solow]

Re Oakmont;  Pete Dye has commented, using Oakmont as an example, that the major difference is the lack of grain associated with lowere cutting heights, new grasses and technology including groomers which stand the grass up straight to insure a short straight cut.  He suggests that by breaking down old film on a frames per second basis and calculating the roll one can judge the speed of greens from prior years.  My recollection is taht down grain putts approximated today's speeds but putts into the grain were much slower.  This required judgment on the part of the player and also made the down grain putts seem even faster.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Mayday,
Simply don't respond. I'm faced with this all of the time, as I'm sure a lot of others that fight the good fight of restoring classic values.

Yes, it is aggrivating.

Just two days ago, I had to sit and listen to one of my best friends ponitifcate the positive merits of one of the most prime wastes of perfect golf land here in Southern California. I know this because I got to visit the site several times before it was even touched, and it was just absolutely outstanding land.

What happened was it was given to Art Hills, who I feel did about as a good of a job that can be done from a desk in Toledo, Ohio, some 2500+/- miles away. The course is close to unplayable for most, but you won't get a complaint out of them because it doesn't mix well with the fact they spent $100.00 of their hard earnded money to play it.

So what did I say to my friend?

Nothing. Not one damn thing.

[ian]

They always run fastest just before they die.

[Jim_Coleman]

   As one of those "old time members" (although chronologically younger and better looking than you), I can tell you that the greens were faster 25 years ago (under Andy Drevyenko) when they were a combination of poa, crab and dirt. Under Armand Suni they were regularly probably about like they are now when Warren rolls them - I'd say around 9.  When Warren wants, he can zip them up to where they're as fast as when Armond zipped them up.  It's only a question of when, not whether.  I do think it is fair to say that the greens were faster more often "in the old days."

  After playing with a few long time members,they said this to me.Frankly i doubt it.It seems that this nostaglia based on personal memory is an impediment to an intelligent discussion about how courses have changed over time.I think notes should be made each year about various course conditions plus some sort of photographic evidence .
 
   I guess it annoys me  somewhat because i was not there 20 years ago,so how can i respond.

[mike_malone]

Jim
   Welcome---To say you are better looking than me is to set a low hurdle for yourself.I think that some sort of evidence of conditions should be maintained so that we do not have to depend on memory as much.

[Pat_K.]

As a practicing turf manager I'd have to say that anyone who believes greens were faster on a regular basis twenty years ago is suffering from a case of revisionist history. The tools available twenty years ago were not capable of grooming as well as they are now. They were not able to mow as low as we can now. The products for growth regulation were not available then.
    Does that mean they were not faster during the heat of summer? No. By far the biggest change in the every day  playability of greens besides the tools we now have to use is the irrigation systems and our watering practices. Twenty years ago many of our finest courses didn't have the control of the water they do now. The delivery is much more uniform now.                                                                                    Then in July and August the greens burnt up (not neccessarily a bad thing). Then they were quicker then glass.
 The greens had more variability in speed then, so they were both slower and quicker it all depended on the time of year. Now they are faster on a regular basis but probably not put into dormancy or on the verge of death as they were in a  bygone era.

[Eric Pevoto]

Armen Suny  

[TEPaul]

Bob Huntley said;

"I bet Oakmont's were as fast then as now."

Then Mayday said;

"Maybe,maybe not---what would be the evidence other than someone's memory..

And finally SL Solow said;

"Re Oakmont;  Pete Dye has commented, using Oakmont as an example, that the major difference is the lack of grain associated with lowere cutting heights, new grasses and technology including groomers which stand the grass up straight to insure a short straight cut.  He suggests that by breaking down old film on a frames per second basis and calculating the roll one can judge the speed of greens from prior years.  My recollection is taht down grain putts approximated today's speeds but putts into the grain were much slower.  This required judgment on the part of the player and also made the down grain putts seem even faster."

SL Solow has that Pete Dye analysis right--but I don't think Pete really got it completely right when it came to his photographic test analysis of Oakmont's green speeds in the Open in the 1960s.

Pete did say that the extreme speeds of Oakmont's greens back then had everything to do with downgrain putts and that they couldn't have been as fast as today or even as fast as some players remembered (Nicklaus). So Pete said after his photograhic and time calculated test (measuring the length and time of putts) was all about grain (downgrain), and as such would have stimped much slower than today as stimping tests both directions.

I have a man who disputes, in part, Pete's Oakmont analysis. Pete basically claimed greens couldn't possibly have been as fast back then because a certain piece of green cutting equipment that made much lower cut heights possible hadn't been invented.

But this man is Emil Loeffler's nephew, and as a kid he was on the crew that cut Oakmont's greens--I'm guessing this goes back to the 1950s or even late 1940s. He said Emil Loeffler figured out a way of jury-rigging his green mowing equipment and lowering the bar on the mowers thereby allowing for much lower cut heights than anyone else was getting back then. And Emil also insisted that all the blades be dedicatedly sharpened every night.

And consequently Oakmont's greens were always much much faster than any others in the world. We sure do know that William Fownes was a fanatic on greens as fast as he could possibly get them.

So, I'm not so sure that those Oakmont greens way back when really were all about speed just downgrain--they may have been just super fast in any case (without much grain). There seems little doubt, in any case, they were consistently the fastest in the world.

But were they as fast as they are today? That would be hard to believe. I even asked the super out there last summer how fast he does get them--and he said he can run them up to 13 on the stimp.

And for anyone who really knows the architecture of some of those Oakmont greens that in itself is downright hair-raising. But as fast as they are, they're just about the truest greens I've ever played on and have been for as long as I can remember. If you get the ball on line--it will stay on line! Only trouble is there's a lot of so-called cellophane bridges on the holes of Oakmont as your ball trucks right on over the middle of the cup and continues on....and on!

But I guess the question of this thread is--were the greens of Oakmont, back in the 1940s and 1950s under Loeffler and in the 1960s in the Open actually 13 on the stimpmeter as they are today?

I, for one, can't believe they possibly could've been. But the better question is where do the speeds go from here? And I'd sure recommend they cap the speed of them right where they are now, and for the rest of time. Anything faster than what they are now would just be a freak show.

Agronomists and supers will probably always be able to keep lowering cutting heights and consequently keep pushing green speeds higher, but I can guarantee that no green chairman, super or agronimist is going to reinvent the laws of physics of  of a golf ball rolling across a green!