When I moved in 1996 to the golf course community I live in, I was playing full time and I spent most every late afternoon/early evening playing our south course.
Over the years and constantly changing superintendents, I watched the conditions deteriorate, including the slow, inward creep of green shrinkage.
A couple years ago, one of our former supers was talking to me on the putting green about some of the turf issues and traffic on the greens. When I mentioned the significant loss of sq footage, he defensively told me they hadn’t shrunk at all. I had worked in golf courses much of my life, and the loss was honestly very large. We talked about my belief and he disagreed. A very good guy BTW so no problem
Two days later I was putting again and he asked to drive out to the 18th green. He had gone out and found the green liner after we spoke, and discovered the back right quadrant of the green had lost nearly 6 feet! He couldn’t believe it. The Second hole was worse I told him (I chipped on that green a lot in the past). It had lost hundreds of square feet
They had literally created a bigger compaction/wear problem while actually losing a lot of great hole locations
Management company didn’t want to fix it back then.
They have a very good and a strong super now and the course has improved tremendously in spite of the company thanks to a talented guy.
I was always amazed at the amount of green turf lost By this