[Forrest Richardson]

At next week's ASGCA Annual Meeting one of the discussion sessions will be on green speeds — essentially, whether agronomic conditioning should "win out" over contouring to propel a ball "faster" along the surface. As greenkeeping has progressed we have seen faster and faster conditoning, which has been discussed here many times. The emphasis of our discussion will be whether the "lay of the land" (e.g., the contouring) should perhaps be placed ahead of closer mowing as a way to make the ball move "faster".

It's complex because many golfers and those charged with taking care of courses have not fully thought about this relationship — the gradients of green surfaces -vs- the way we manage the surface itself. (And, let me clarify: A 'for instance' was the change of Oakmont's No. 2 green because it was "too fast", whereas it was actually "too steep"...the resulting change softened the gradient and replaced one "fast" for another "fast"...I was always curious about this change when it very well could have stimulated a return of steepness and contouring on other greens at Oakmont...instead, the choice was closer mowing.)

Would be interested to get comments here. It's always fun to hear individual thoughts.

[Ben Sims]

Forrest,

I’ve really only played two courses with any regularity this season, Ballyneal and an old-ish Press Maxwell here in Colorado called Country Club of Woodmoor. Very different courses.

The small, perched, tilted Maxwell greens react with predicted difficulty when the speeds get into double digits. And Ballyneal was clearly the fastest I’d ever seen it just a couple weeks ago. It was pretty difficult in my opinion. We putted off the green multiple times during the trip and I saw experienced players putt off the green in the member/guest at Woodmoor as well. Nary a negative word about fairness or difficulty.

Which is my way of saying that it’s clear to me that contour is the “winner”. Both of these courses are great examples of conditioning/agronomy being seasonal and temporary. In theory, contours are forever. If the agronomy is bit slow at certain times of year and faster during other times, I’m okay with that and it seems other players understand this as well.

PS-The problem with the Oakmont example is that we all know why it went down that way. They want a stimp reading on the less contoured surfaces to match the stimp on the steep ones. For consistency. No chance you could keep Oakmont #2 at 12.5-13ft.

[jeffwarne]

Of course


there is FAR more interest, variety and potential difficulty in greens with more degrees of slope in "pinnable" areas.
and a "fast" putt(as in just set it in motion)on a lower stimp with enough slope(steep) to make it fast is far different than one back up the same steep slope.(i.e. more skill is involved)


Super fast(stimp) greens make nearly all putts the same, or if applied to old school sloped greens, make interesting pins impossible (or stupid).
Searching for the flattest spots on interesting greens seems..well...to defeat the purpose of interesting greens.


Uneducated golfers/decision makers or those with their self image wrapped up in other's potential perception of their club(as measured by a stupid device)really struggle with this concept, and thus the tail wags the dog.


Then there's the oft brought up notion that faster greens are smoother.
Greens running 16 bring in EVERY SINGLE imperfection/wobble as the ball barely trickles(especially later in the day), so I don't buy that at all.
Of course there are exceptions to both.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Greens running 16 bring in EVERY SINGLE imperfection/wobble as the ball barely trickles(especially later in the day), so I don't buy that at all.

[Jim Sherma]

My assessment of the situation is that over my lifetime a bunch of guys with money spent a lot of money making their greens roll faster only to then spend more money flattening them out so that their downhill putts are as fast as they were before they juiced the greens in the first place.


I agree with the notion that faster greens tend to be easier for me to make a lot of putts on. Not sure why, I just naturally "see" the putts I need to hit more readily.


Edit - the worst is seeing old tilt with variation greens get changed to flattish pinning areas with transition slopes between them. Awful evolution of green design in my opinion.

[Sean_A]

I recently had my first experience with the stimp overwhelming the interest of the greens. To be honest it was silly and completely unnecessary. If the greens were running sub10 right now I would be writing about how much fun they were. Instead I use the word silly.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

Trueness of roll ahead of speed please.
atb

[Jeff_Brauer]

Forrest,


By coincidence, I saw this just as I was helping the Education Committee put together the presentation.  I think we will cancel the session now that you have brought in the real experts to answer the question, LOL.


One question I have always pondered, not unlike Jim Sherma's comment is whether or not a gently rolling green with steeper slopes is inherently harder to read and putt, or just exacts more penalties for mis reads and poor distance control, i.e., a miss will run 8 feet past the hole vs. a more "practical" (for public courses) 3 feet past the hole.


Pete Dye once told me that tour pros say flat greens are harder to read, but in his opinion, their judgement was really that they only had 1-2 practice rounds to learn them, so they really thought they were easier, or at least easier to learn quickly.  He added that average players always seemed to like a bit more contour, but I think he was thinking in the 2-2.5% range, and not old style 5-6% slopes on greens.


And, are they in fact "more interesting" to most players?  I will readily agree that steeper rolling greens are more attractive!

[Forrest Richardson]

Karsten Solheim "designed" his little Moon Walk par-3 with all tilted plate greens — his wisdom was that it was best to have just one consistent tilt ?? I challenged him on that. You don't challenge Karsten

[Tom_Doak]

It's a matter of opinion, of course.  But in practice, faster and faster greens have been the standard for my 40 years in the business.


I think the reason is that only one or two courses in any market can compete on being the "best" course architecturally, but any club with money can compete on having the "best" conditions, and golfers have been convinced that the "best" greens are the fastest.


The problems arise when the best courses, with more interesting greens, then feel the need to match the speeds of their neighbors, so they will be the "best" course on those grounds, too.  And in the process, they start to undermine the featuring that made them great architecturally.

[Forrest Richardson]

Tom — What would a new metric be for quantifying speeds? For example, perhaps the flaw in the Stimpmeter is that we look for a flat area of a representative green to measure ??

[Tom_Doak]

Tom — What would a new metric be for quantifying speeds? For example, perhaps the flaw in the Stimpmeter is that we look for a flat area of a representative green to measure ??

The flaw in the Stimpmeter is the assumption that any number on it is optimal for all greens.


The difficulty of putting is a [mathematical] product of the green speed and the slopes within the green.  But I don't know that there is a simple way of expressing the two, together.


The fact is that certain greens would optimally be played at lower Stimpmeter speeds, but the reality is that golfers don't want to adjust their stroke all the time for different speeds.  Bandon Dunes gets away with slow-ish green speeds because you are there for four days and they're all about the same, so you get used to it.  Scottish courses get away with it for the same reason.  But when Tom Weiskopf's course at Forest Dunes had their greens at 11+, I knew that the greens at The Loop would have to be close to the same, because golfers would hate leaving all their putts short one day and then blowing them all past the hole on the next day.


So, as with many other things in the public venue, the loudest voice [i.e. the fastest green speeds] win out, and everyone else adjusts to them.

[jeffwarne]

Tom — What would a new metric be for quantifying speeds? For example, perhaps the flaw in the Stimpmeter is that we look for a flat area of a representative green to measure ??

 But when Tom Weiskopf's course at Forest Dunes had their greens at 11+, I knew that the greens at The Loop would have to be close to the same, because golfers would hate leaving all their putts short one day and then blowing them all past the hole on the next day.


So, as with many other things in the public venue, the loudest voice [i.e. the fastest green speeds] win out, and everyone else adjusts to them.

aaaaarrrrrgghhh.
The truth hurts.
Amazing how golfers speak about wanting challenge, but complain at the first hint of a surface being different(a challenge) than the one the day before....
Sad that's that we as golfers demand from the best architect of our generation, thus placing a constraint on the potential of a design.


I'm curious if there's a certain strain of warm weather grass(presumably a bermuda strain) that performs better and rolls smooth(vs.other strains) at say an 8 or 9 to allow for more creative design via pinnable slope and tilt.

[Thomas Dai]

There’s something wryly amusing when a player who claims to like fast greens de-greens one.
Or when a player who claims to like fast greens expects to be given a 3 ft putt from above the hole (a splendid opportunity to use the yee olde phrase “I admire your putting stroke so much I’d rather like to see it once more”).
 

Atb

[Kalen Braley]

I think there is some context needed here.  As one who plays the vast majority of my golf on "affordable" Public courses, I haven't seen anywhere near the pursuit of this.

For example, I first moved to Spokane 20+ years ago and the green speeds on the 15-20 courses in the larger area have been basically the same, perhaps a touch quicker now.  (Ditto for the publics here in Northern Utah over a 8-10 year period)  They actually lowered the green speeds at Indian Canyon because too many people bitched about dealing with the contours, which were perfect IMO at roughly 9 on the stimp.... so they are now 6.5-7, which completely ruined it.  (But don't get me wrong 11 would be absurd too!)

If we look at the new projects in the US over last 10-15 years, I'd guess at least 90% of them have been pricey high end daily fees or Privates, which I can understand this concept if "faster" means "better". But as it relates to golf for the masses, green speeds I'm guessing have been basically the same.

[Sean_A]

I think there is some context needed here.  As one who plays the vast majority of my golf on "affordable" Public courses, I haven't seen anywhere near the pursuit of this.

For example, I first moved to Spokane 20+ years ago and the green speeds on the 15-20 courses in the larger area have been basically the same, perhaps a touch quicker now.  (Ditto for the publics here in Northern Utah over a 8-10 year period)  They actually lowered the green speeds at Indian Canyon because too many people bitched about dealing with the contours, which were perfect IMO at roughly 9 on the stimp.... so they are now 6.5-7, which completely ruined it.  (But don't get me wrong 11 would be absurd too!)

If we look at the new projects in the US over last 10-15 years, I'd guess at least 90% of them have been pricey high end daily fees or Privates, which I can understand this concept if "faster" means "better". But as it relates to golf for the masses, green speeds I'm guessing have been basically the same.

Of course you are right. Overly fast greens are necessarily the product of fairly high maintenance budget clubs. It's not a real issue for the vast majority of courses....but things can change. All green speeds have gone up in the past 20 plus years. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest this trend won't continue for the next 20 years.

Ciao

[jeffwarne]

I think there is some context needed here.  As one who plays the vast majority of my golf on "affordable" Public courses, I haven't seen anywhere near the pursuit of this.

For example, I first moved to Spokane 20+ years ago and the green speeds on the 15-20 courses in the larger area have been basically the same, perhaps a touch quicker now.  (Ditto for the publics here in Northern Utah over a 8-10 year period)  They actually lowered the green speeds at Indian Canyon because too many people bitched about dealing with the contours, which were perfect IMO at roughly 9 on the stimp.... so they are now 6.5-7, which completely ruined it.  (But don't get me wrong 11 would be absurd too!)

If we look at the new projects in the US over last 10-15 years, I'd guess at least 90% of them have been pricey high end daily fees or Privates, which I can understand this concept if "faster" means "better". But as it relates to golf for the masses, green speeds I'm guessing have been basically the same.

Of course you are right. Overly fast greens are necessarily the product of fairly high maintenance budget clubs. It's not a real issue for the vast majority of courses....but things can change. All green speeds have gone up in the past 20 plus years. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest this trend won't continue for the next 20 years.

Ciao

This.
Even in the UK I've seen a jump.
And yes Kalen's probably right at affordable publics, though I think all low end publics I play are faster than 20 years ago.(except maybe the Goat)
It's a slow steady process.
That said, most of those publics aren't too fast for the slopes, and fortunately they lack the funds to alter them.
Certainly a trend in new courses and in hole placement in competitive golf.

[Robert Mercer Deruntz]

In the past few months I've played some courses where the greens had been flattened for "modern" green speeds.  The result is a diminished golf course.  The two worst examples are holes 11 and 13 at Pebble Beach.  I understand that there weren't enough pinable locations, but instead of a softening, there was a flattening.  Lost are the tricky internal contours which made greens reading really interesting.  Recently, I played in a tournament on a recently renovated course where the greens were over 12, but there was little fear of putting from above the pin because the slopes were not steep, and overall, the opportunity for a great set of greens was lost.

[Forrest Richardson]

From Geoff S's site:

The Stimpmeter was invented by Edward Stimpson in the 1930s as a device for measuring green speeds, but it was not adopted by the USGA until 1977, whereupon the USGA field staff was commissioned to measure 581 courses nationwide to benchmark the speed of American greens. Here is a sampling of what was found:


Cypress Point: 7 feet, 8 inches
Pebble Beach: 7-2

San Francisco Golf Club: 6-5

Augusta National: 7-11

Medinah: 7-8

Congressional: 6-4
Oakland Hills: 8-5
Pinehurst No. 2: 6-10

Pine Valley: 7-4

Winged Foot: 7-5
Shinnecock Hills: 7-2

Merion: 6-4

Harbour Town: 5-1

Oakmont: 9-8

[Jim Hoak]

I believe this is one of the most important modern golf course architecture issues.  Yes, excessive green speeds are wrecking great classic greens’ contours.  I think it is directly related to male golfers letting their macho instincts take over, and clubs wanting to brag about excessive green speeds, as though that determines the quality of their course.  I cringe when I hear of clubs bragging about having to slow their green speeds down for national tournaments.  That’s insane for everyday play!

[jeffwarne]

From Geoff S's site:

The Stimpmeter was invented by Edward Stimpson in the 1930s as a device for measuring green speeds, but it was not adopted by the USGA until 1977, whereupon the USGA field staff was commissioned to measure 581 courses nationwide to benchmark the speed of American greens. Here is a sampling of what was found:


Cypress Point: 7 feet, 8 inches
Pebble Beach: 7-2

San Francisco Golf Club: 6-5

Augusta National: 7-11

Medinah: 7-8

Congressional: 6-4
Oakland Hills: 8-5
Pinehurst No. 2: 6-10

Pine Valley: 7-4

Winged Foot: 7-5
Shinnecock Hills: 7-2

Merion: 6-4

Harbour Town: 5-1

Oakmont: 9-8

No doubt these numbers were skewed by the preparation and seasonality of green speeds, which was a thing back in the day.
i.e. greens would be amped up for a major, a member-guest, a club championship.
Then some committee man decided greens should be fast for everyday play-for consistency and to measure his male unit.
That's when the trouble began.
Anyone who thinks ANGC didn't produce ultra fast PUTTS in season, especially at tournament time just wasn't paying attention.
The difference was there was more overall slope/tilt in pinnable areas and less flattening of tiers.
Ironically I first played ANGC in 1977 and the greens were very slow as it was just after the rye overseed had been planted and not cut to later mature heights yet (October) and they were indeed slow-maybe 5?.
I attend the event every year and the flattening of tiers over time is noticeable, and that was really confirmed when I played it again this May. Sure they were fast and sloped, but not nearly as slopey/tilty as they were near pinnable areas.
What's funny is their greens can still only be as fast as the slopes allow, and there are places with much faster(measured by stimp) greens.(obviously with less slope)
I'd like to say their greens produce much faster PUTTS, but nearly ALL high end clubs(especially modern ones) produce PUTTS the same speed(not stimp, but downhill speed)-i.e. a ball just set in motion will end up near the hole on a downhiller.
This requires minimal skill and judgement-just a recognition that pins are usually set for this to occur.
A lower stimp will require far more judgement as the downhiller will be far more varied in stroke size than the uphiller on a steep slow green, vs. a super high flattish tiered green-where the uphill vs. downhill size stroke is not that stark of a contrast.

[Forrest Richardson]

I would enjoy ideas on how we might quantify / measure green speeds (maybe a poor word) based on mowing height + slopes. How could we make a difference by taking into account the gradients and interest ??

[Tommy Williamsen]

I believe this is one of the most important modern golf course architecture issues.  That’s insane for everyday play!

Jim, I have heard this as well. Most of the time, I just don't believe it.

[Mike_Young]

I think the reason is that only one or two courses in any market can compete on being the "best" course architecturally, but any club with money can compete on having the "best" conditions, and golfers have been convinced that the "best" greens are the fastest.

I'm a cynic when it comes to the average private club board or green committee.  What Tom says above is hard to overcome and IMHO will always be.  When a person doesn't know what he doesn't know and really has little desire to learn then it's a hard sale.  That's the way the average member sees architecture but he sees conditioning in a totally different light...that's why there are so many nice cart paths...

[Peter Sayegh]

Trueness of roll ahead of speed please.
atb

Thomas,
Would you allow "Interest" instead of "Trueness?"

I've never understood the fanaticism with fast greens.

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