John:  It depends on where you are.

If you're building a golf course on sandy soil, USGA greens are probably unnecessary.  I've had no qualms about skipping that process at High Pointe, Lost Dunes, Pacific Dunes, Barnbougle, and St. Andrews Beach, and frankly they are the last greens in my portfolio that I worry about failing.

But if you're not in sandy soils you have to come up with some type of construction method to produce positive drainage and resist compaction.  The USGA profile is not the only one, but it's the longest-tested and the most expensive, so that's what most clients and architects are comfortable with.  If cost is an issue, an experienced agronomist can probably suggest something a little less complicated that would still work fine ... but he's sticking his neck out to do so, and in this day and age, most people don't want to stick their necks out.

Thanks Tom, I was hoping you would reply. And I suspected that was the answer, but most of the courses I see built in Florida build USGA greens on sand.

John,

I agree with everything said above by Tom and Jari.  While there is probably a way for supers to maintain almost anything, the fact that many old courses do maintain push up greens, with great efforts sometimes that may be transparent to the average member, doesn't make the sand green any less effective as the preferred way to build or remodel new greens.  

The basic theory of the original USGA specs was that greens need water, fertilzer, sun, air movement and relatively non compacted soils to do their best.  When pelletized fertilizers became widespread, and irrigation was perfected, the need for soil in the growing medium to retain moisture and nutrients was greatly reduced.  The thought was using sand reduced compaction and the other elements could be replaced easily.

As environmental concerns came into play, the idea of adding some soil back to greens mix resurfaced, especially since we found sand greens do compact, whereas theoretically, they shouldn't.  Other research yielded much more knowledge about what really happens in greens, and the specs have changed over the years.

I recall from my days of working in Asia that the Austrailian supers generally didn't believe the USGA greens worked as well there as other methods they had developed.  Whether it was a reaction to local maintenance methods, climate, or toilets flushing backwards, I never really knew, but it isn't hard for me to believe that one method, as good as it is generally, would work in every possible condition nationwide or worldwide......

And yet, in the US of A, it has more and more research has transformed it from a method to make good greens from readily available materials to a point for lawsuits when the mix drains 0.1" per hour less than USGA specs, or has 2% more or less fine particles than the spec says.  The USGA revisions have broadened out the spec range to account for this, but as Tom says, it is still a concern to architects.

I am comfortable with California greens and other USGA mods, based, on as Jari says, careful analysis of local conditions.  In many cases, the USGA wants 12-24" perc rates, and the  readily available sands (for both construction and years of topdressing later) drain slower.  So why add an organic when you like the existing drainage rates, which will slow down over time anyway, for instance?

I always read all of your fabulous comments about the old classics and how great those greens must be.  I expect many of those greens are old push up greens, or just otherwise laid out. Pinehurst #2 for example has been allegedly affected by years of top dressing, and apparently they can still pull off a US Open.

John,

The Pinehurst greens were changed to USGA before the last US Open if I remember correctly.

Brian

The sand material was tested and approved for USGA method but did not work well.  The reason was that the sand particles in Finland are more rounded than in more southern countries because the ice age has rounded them.  This makes the water holding capacity in sand particles much lower than with more irregular shaped sands.  You have to make the greens mix with more fine sand here than the USGA method suggests.

Jari,

Tell me if I am thinking wrong here but...if the sand mix was tested according to USGA recommendations then it would surely have shown that the perc. rate (hydraulic cond.) was high.  If it was too high would that not have shown up on the tests?

We used to ignore the recommended limits for perc rate (old USGA rec.) anyway and always tried to go high.  We usually aim for anywhere between 350 to 500 mm on the rootzones we are putting in our greens.  The reason is that under lab tests (as you know) they are going to perc higher than by the time the rootzone hits the drainage carpet especially as it has been handled god knows how many times by machine drivers that have no respect for it.

Brian