My Kingdom for anything but a fairly straight putt

[Patrick_Mucci]

Watching the Senior US Open and the AT&T provided an interesting contrast.

Some of the putts at the Senior Open had significant break in them.

At the AT&T and most other PGA Tour venues it seems that the great majority of putts are fairly straight, with no substantive break.

Has the perceived need to produce birdies for the viewing audience AND the need for speed, caused course after course to flatten their greens ?

I can't remember a tournament where a golfer had a putt with substantive break from 4 feet, 8 feet or 12 feet.

Is the PGA Tour, TV and speed removing contour and character from the greens ?

Southern Hills, Winged Foot and others have succumbed to the leveling scalpel.    Are Merion and others next ?

Why are clubs willing to squeeze the distinctive architectural life and interest out of their greens ?

What can be done to stop the process ?

[Mark Bourgeois]

Patrick, there were plenty of big swinging putts at Congo!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Patrick, there were plenty of big swinging putts at Congo!

Mark,

From 4, 8 and 12 feet ?

Where ?

[Mark Bourgeois]

Patrick,

I have to run, but off memory 3,4,13, and 15 for starters.  Oh, 12 and 14, too.  On Friday I watched Davis Love four putt 12. His second putt was from about 2 feet; the thing curled off then nearly reversed.  Similar deal for Geoff Ogilvy when he four putted 14.

And on which hole did Appleby miss that 2 footer low on Sunday? The greens tend to have punchbowl rims -- it's one of several things that makes for a "blah" sameness out there (makes it hard to remember individual holes) -- and on Sunday they cut a lot of pins out by the edges (I think it was 14 within 3 paces) so that if a golfer went at the pin and missed by more than a few feet above, below, or outside he was almost certain to have a breaking putt.  If he played safe and was inside he generally got a straight putt, as long as he wasn't too far inside, in which case he most likely had to deal with a hump or ridge.

Also, outside your specs, I distinctly recall several long putts (15-30 feet) where the golfer stood obliquely, sometimes nearly at a right angle, to the hole.

Alas, I deleted my Sunday telecast or I would go through it to confirm my memory and my earlier comment to you.

All of that said, I don't disagree with your broader point.  I think maybe Congo fits into the "USGA category" rather than the PGAT category.  The USGA tends to go, at least for it's men's open, to older courses, whereas the PGAT tends to play newer courses, right?  So the USGA has gone about flattening greens whereas the PGAT uses "built-in" flattened greens, no?  The new 10th at Congo would support this, as it has a big sectional divider but if they were inside 12 feet they were likely to be on a relatively flat shelf.

Mark

[Adam Clayman]

Patrick,
 Come to Nebraska, what's old is what's new. Oh come to Nebraska the greens make you drool.

Please pack-up that Kingdom and send it.

[JESII]

Is it possible that the guys on TV are so good that they are able to chip / pitch / putt and wedge their ball into positions where the putts are straighter?

Also, I don't think Pat would view the greens at Congo as very flat if he were to see them in person so this might be a bad example...as pointed out by Mark B. but the problem is there.

I Monday qualified into the Honda Classic at Heron Bay in 2000 so was able to see those greens at their best and there is not 5% of the total green space out there with more than 1% slope...I'd bet on it.   40 footers that look like big breakers broke no more than a foot, and anything inside 10 feet must be aimed inside the hole...no matter what it looks like...

[Patrick_Mucci]

JES II,

Not only are the PGA Tour players you're watching great putters, they're also playing at the highest level.

Remember, the PGA Tour players not playing their best have missed the cut or aren't on the leader board.

In addition, the ball they putt with today is far superior to the balls of 20-30-50 years ago.

I've played Congressional Blue.

Don't confuse slope with contour, there's a world of difference.

I think it's a crime that wonderful golf courses like Southern Hills, Winged Foot and others have/are destroying their greens, greens of great character and history, by softening them.  And, for what purpose, certainly not for the play of the members and their guests.  Rather, for four days, once every 10-13 years.   It's a crime.

They've clearly sold their souls to the Devil.

Has Merion decided whether or not they're going to soften some of their greens, thereby destroying, forever, their character, that which made them distinctive ?

Will the current architectural era, known for the production of Sand Hills, Wild Horse, Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and many, many others, also be known as the era when the distinctive character of greens was removed, creating bland, mundane putting surfaces, whose only redeeming quality in the minds of some, was speed ?

Is this not similar to what happened when the PGA hired AWT ?  Resulting in the extinction of an inordinate number of bunkers throughout the land ?

Anyone who doesn't think this is an alarming trend, must suffer from Vertigo.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Golf doesn't seem to deal with technology very well, does it? In this case the technology is agronomy.  One thing that appeared to frustrate the golfers at Congressional was the relative slowness of the greens.  It does make you think about what Pete Dye and Rees Jones have said about slower greens with contour and grain being no easier than the fast greens of today. (On the other hand, another thing that clearly got to them -- at least the leaders Sunday p.m. -- was the poa, an "anti-agronomy" thing sorta.  Guess it's time for their ~10 year green rebuilding exercise.)

Bob Toski in Golf Digest writes about the old wristy putting stroke and why it disappeared.  Green speed is one factor.

It got me thinking about another aspect of shaggier greens that make them harder to put: if you have to put some wrist into it, you're going to have a harder time hitting the sweet spot than if you use a "hands-free" motion.

And apparently you can add Olympic 18 to the list of USGA decapitation victims.

Mark

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark,

When does the Poa generally disappear from the putting surfaces in the D.C. area ?

June ?  July ?  August ?

[Phil Benedict]

How is Oakmont able to buck the trend towards flattening greens?

[Mark Bourgeois]

Pat, to be honest I thought they were already out!  I would think end of June they should definitely be out, some places even earlier. Maybe it's a Congo thing, as I haven't noticed the same amount of bounce and wiggle at other clubs in the area as appeared during the Sunday telecast. On the other hand, I think last week was our first sustained heat blast of the year.

As an aside, I kept thinking, "Uh oh, Tiger's got a real dilemma now." It will be interesting to see how his dislike of poa stacks up against his apparent dislike of Avenel.  He and his people have been over-the-top in their praise, but it will be interesting to see if he pushes the club to do something.  Or maybe pressure will come from the USGA, not necessarily for the Am but for the Open?

Mark

[Patrick_Mucci]

Phil Benedict,

My take on Oakmont is that the club has a unique culture.

That they enjoy their difficult greens with speed.

It's part of their tradition, and not a departure from the norm.

[George Pazin]

Don't confuse slope with contour, there's a world of difference.

I think this is a topic worth exploring.

In a perfect world, it'd be nice to have some combination of both - unless you're the PGA Tour, where the perfect combination is a lack of both. But I'd settle for having even a preponderance of either.

Hidden Creek strikes me as a course that relies more on contour than slope, as opposed to a course like Lehigh, which seems to rely more on slope than contour (please keep in mind I've only played each once, so don't rip me a new one if my memory is not perfect). I found both very challenging, with putting and with shots around the green as well.

I'd love to hear more from the architects about slope versus contour - which you feel works better, which you prefer, or even why you prefer flatter speedier greens.

I'd also love to hear from the folks more historically aware than yours truly, who could perhaps share insights on guys like Mackenzie, Tillie, CBM, Ross and Colt, and especially Maxwell, and whether they tended to favor one of the two, or both, or simply natural contours.

Hats off to the Oakmont membership, who prove on a daily basis that it isn't necessary to remove contour or slope while retaining high speeds.

[Phil Benedict]

I too am interested in the distinction between slope and contour.  Seems like slope may be more problematical in the age of hyperfast greens.  I play an older course that has lots of slope in the greens but not a lot of internal contour.

Are Oakmont's greens characterized by huge slopes or lots of internal contour, or both?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Pat,

I would buy your theory except that whenever I have played a TPC course, designed especially for Tour events, the greens have far more contours than the normal course.

So, who should we believe (to quote groucho marx) your view on TV or a view from right on the course?

BTW, my TPC experience includes mostly the ones in Florida, Palm Springs and Texas.

[George Pazin]

Are Oakmont's greens characterized by huge slopes or lots of internal contour, or both?

Phil, I'm certainly not the most experienced with the course, so others may differ in their opinion, but my own is that Oakmont's greens are characterised more by the slopes of the ground, but there is certainly no lack of internal contour, either, so I guess if pressed I would say both.

My home muni is an older course (1930s public works project) that primarily relies on slope as well. It's actually kind of amazing how treacherous some downhill putts are, given the extremely slow speed the greens are kept at - they probably stimp at 6 or 8 or something like that, yet some holes you simply can't get above the hole if you want a realistically makeable putt.