I have been involved as a greens committee member and chair since 1992. I have chaired our District's agronomic program, which is the only district to have its own full time agronomist, since 2000. I am a traditionalist as all of you who have been on this Board for any period of time must know. When our Illinois Hall of Fame Superintendent began to push to regrass our 1921 CH Alison greens I fought it hard. They were very good and had the look that many of us love. I was afraid that the course would lose its character. Our Super showed me the length of our roots in the middle of a hot humid Chicago summer (aside to Adam, very different from the British Isles). He explained that we were basically growing our greens hydroponically. Tougher to obtain desirable speeds (a matter of taste), tougher to prevent disease, requiring more inputs and water, tougher to keep alive. All of this from the first Super to go public with the need to reduce maintained turf and to naturalize golf courses and who had served us since 1960, retiring in 2008. Clearly not one to embrace change for its own sake. So we embarked on an aggressive drill and fill program, gassed our greens and reseeded with an A1 and A4 blend. I note that the science has advanced since we completed our project. This was more than 10 years ago. Our greens are better than they were before. Smoother, less water, less inputs and a real root structure. We have some poa intrusion but very little thanks to our crew. We can talk about appearance but the data is very clear. In any climate that has hot summers, the new grasses perform better. The studies have been done and the data is clear but all one has to do is take a pocket knife and look at roots in late July or early August and you will understand the difference. If one doesn't care about performance and prefers appearance so be it. But you are kidding yourself if you believe your opinion is performance based. I freely admit that I fought the same fight but I did the research and have observed results in the field. My education continues but there is no going backward. I am waiting to hear from someone who actually must grow the grass and maintain a golf course who feels otherwise.