[Jeff_Brauer]

Had this discussion yesterday with a golfer of note. I have some thoughts but want yours first.......

And, has any gca ever written of trying to make greens deceptive to read on purpose, and if so, how?

Lastly, was this site down for a while today, or was it just my server?

Thanks in advance.....

[Adam Clayman]

Jeff, The aspects that makes greens deceptive is the same one that makes other shots deceptive. Undulation.
 Not being able to easily distinguish what is uphill and what is down is what makes me think harder and be more aware.

Not sure if that's the context you wanted, but that's my take on what you asked.

[Ken Moum]

The greens that are most likely to befuddle the folks I play wtih are those that are benched into a hillside. They always break with the hill more than people can see.

They are also typically unable to see the size of the break in a green perched on the top of a hill, especially if there's a false front that drapes onto the upslope.

Now, whether or not those greens are intentionally hard to read is debatable. Both "tricks" are probably related to drainage and efficacy of design as much as anything.

Ken

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

To me what makes a green hard to read is a property which has a significant natural tilt in one direction.  The natural tilt fails to register with golfers, so greens which tilt in the same direction appear to be flatter than they are, and sometimes a green which is held up a bit appears to be tilting sharply the other way even though it isn't.

I don't know what you could do on a flat site to make greens hard to read.  Perhaps you'd just throw in a few front-to-back sloped greens, since people nearly always assume a putt will break toward the front of the green.

[Peter Pallotta]

A really interesting question, and three good posts in a row - thanks.

Jeff - apparently, lot of things make a green hard to read for me. I think a subtle 'spine' that runs through the green can be tough. I'm never quite sure what 'side' I'm of it I'm on -- and neither bright sun nor shade/shadows makes it any easier.

I look forward to hearing your ideas -- I love these kinds of 'tells' from the professionals.

Peter  

[Tim Bert]

For me it can be difficult to read a green that obvious contour in one direction if you observe the perimeter of the green, but then has some subtle interior contour which counters this effect.

There are two versions of this which make things tough for me...

1. I notice and react to the interior contour but don't notice that it is overwhelmed by the larger underlying slope of the green

2. The interior contour is so subtle that I don't recognize it offsets a good deal of the underlying slope of the green.

I also find that freshly aerated and sanded greens can be very difficult to read, but I don't think that's what you are looking for in this thread.

[Tim Bert]

... and I couldn't access the discussion board for a while this afternoon either, though I could access some other parts of the site.

[Jon Wiggett]

Good topic Jeff,

for me the well known settling effect is one of the hardest where by older greens that have set over a longer period often have very subtle borrows that are difficult to read. Also light quality i.e. in shade or twilight.

Lastly strongly tilted greens with big internal movement are also difficult.

[Tom_Doak]

Jon:

I don't think that "settling" has nearly the effect on greens that people claim it has.  I think the difference between ODG greens and new ones is that the greens in the 1920's were all hand finished with rakes, which tends to leave a lot more micro-scale contours than going over them with sand pros or box blades or bulldozers.

[Jordan Wall]

Subtlety makes greens hard to read.

Big contours are a lot easier to deal with simply because they are so big you cannot really miss the break.  You may misjudge how break a particular putt has, but in general there aren't going to be too many misread putts going up or down a big tier.  However, I think that subtlety is different.

When greens have subtle breaks, it can be extremely hard to gauge the amount of break to play, or even which way a putt breaks.  

I also think that front to back sloping grens are, for the most part, harder to read, and simply because there are a lot more back to front greens where balls break to the front of the green.

Also, greens close to mountains, or large bodies of water, can be difficult to read sometimes, for the fact that you have to equate how much a valley, the water, etc will affect the amount of break in the putt.

Oh, and grainy greens, like Bermuda, are hard to read, at least for me, because as if reading a regular green isn't hard enough, you have to figure out how much the direction of the grass will alter how the ball breaks.

[Ryan Farrow]

Subtlety makes greens hard to read.

Big contours are a lot easier to deal with simply because they are so big you cannot really miss the break.  You may misjudge how break a particular putt has, but in general there aren't going to be too many misread putts going up or down a big tier.  However, I think that subtlety is different.

When greens have subtle breaks, it can be extremely hard to gauge the amount of break to play, or even which way a putt breaks.  

I also think that front to back sloping grens are, for the most part, harder to read, and simply because there are a lot more back to front greens where balls break to the front of the green.

Also, greens close to mountains, or large bodies of water, can be difficult to read sometimes, for the fact that you have to equate how much a valley, the water, etc will affect the amount of break in the putt.

Oh, and grainy greens, like Bermuda, are hard to read, at least for me, because as if reading a regular green isn't hard enough, you have to figure out how much the direction of the grass will alter how the ball breaks.

....and let me introduce to Golf Club Atlas:


the next Johnny Miller

[Jon Wiggett]

Tom,

you maybe right with the finishing of the greens by hand and its micro movement but my experience is that settling even over the first few years after construnction can have an effect on the way the green plays.

[Greg Murphy]

I agree with Tom Doak that  "to me what makes a green hard to read is a property which has a significant natural tilt in one direction.  The natural tilt fails to register with golfers, so greens which tilt in the same direction appear to be flatter than they are, and sometimes a green which is held up a bit appears to be tilting sharply the other way even though it isn't."

Even when I become very familiar with a green like this after repeated play, I never ever really get the sense of "seeing" the break, it still "fails to register" and even though I may come to accurately and consistently get the break, it still feels like a wild and lucky guess when the ball tracks to the hole.

I am often fooled by relatively flat greens with putts that break away from the perimeter areas toward the center and also if there is a green side pond that the green slopes away from or a tiered section where the top of the tier is ridged to cause the ball to break away from the slope of the tier.

Flat greens in general I think can be very hard to read. There seemed to be a lot of relatively short, straight putts at Royal Montreal during the President's Cup this weekend that didn't even scare the hole, whereas putts with an obvious gentle break seemd to just pour in.

[cary lichtenstein]

Red Sky, Greg Norman"s Course in Colorado is a poster boy for "greens hard to read". I can't imagine anyone playing that course for the first time shooting a good score for themselves relative to their handicap.

[wsmorrison]

Hand crafting and subtle interplays of slopes rather than overt contouring.

[Steve Kline]

Multiple slopes that tie into another are very difficult to read.

Slopes that are less than or go counter to the lay of the land slightly can be difficult to read.

Front to back sloping greens can be difficult to read because they aren't see often.

Greens with falloffs all around (think #2) can be hard to read because there doesn't seem to be a general tilt to the green at times and where does the general tilt change to the falloff on any side.

[Brent Hutto]

Whether conscious or not, most golfers "know" or at least they believe they know where the overall uphill is relative to a green. Anything you do to mislead that impression will result in putts that break the "wrong way". I think your typical club golfer is pretty easy to fool in this way because his knowledge of the overall slope is sort of a generalized impression based on the surroundings and what he feels under his feet as he's standing on the green. Better golfers probably do a more explicit inventory of all the visual and cognitive clues available and are therefore harder to mislead.

[Dan Kelly]

I'm a lousy reader -- at least of putting greens. I hit a lot of perfectly struck putts on wrong lines. So I'm not one to ask -- BUT!

One thing I've noticed is that raised green-sides often fool me into overreading breaks away from them. I don't see just how much the greens flatten out. Does that make sense?

(Sutton Bay is the poster child for Tom Doak's point: "To me what makes a green hard to read is a property which has a significant natural tilt in one direction.  The natural tilt fails to register with golfers, so greens which tilt in the same direction appear to be flatter than they are, and sometimes a green which is held up a bit appears to be tilting sharply the other way even though it isn't.")

I hope Rick Shefchik chimes in on this thread, re: his boyhood home course, Northland Country Club. He told me that I was the only first-time player who'd ever read those greens well. (Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while!) Northland, too, has a significant natural tilt -- so maybe NCC is another poster child.

[Rick Shefchik]

Dan, I was thinking of Northland as I was reading this thread. Northland (in Duluth, Minn., overlooking Lake Superior) has many greens that perfectly exemplify Tom Doak's point. The rule of thumb at Northland is as basic as can be: everything breaks toward the lake, and sometimes in ways that the first-time player can't believe.

But on the 15th green, built close to a sloping bluff with the lake on your right as you approach the green, the right side of the green is built up high enough that putts on that section of the green break away from the lake. Even members who've played NCC for years don't always get that one right.

[Ron Farris]

Jeff,
I have seen both sides of the coin make a green hard to read.  My home course is very hilly and people from the flatland often have difficulty putting on them, despite the large and obvious contours in the greens.  When a green is built level it often looks like it is uphill, running back into the slope. On a flatland course where I have played the greens are large and very flat, extremely flat.  We hill-folk often over-play the break, simply because we cannot believe the greens can be that flat.  

So some of the difficulty in reading greens may lie in what you experience on a day to day basis.

[Pat Brockwell]

Jeff, I get fooled by small contours that are overshadowed by large ones.  I see the big feature and play it but miss the subtle interplay of the smaller contour.  It is a matter of reading the ground between my ball and the hole and not getting caught up in the big features all around.  I've also seen some flat custard pie greens that are unreadable.

[JESII]

Poor eyesight combined with crap glasses or contacts...

[Joe Hancock]

Subtlety makes greens hard to read.

Big contours are a lot easier to deal with simply because they are so big you cannot really miss the break.  You may misjudge how break a particular putt has, but in general there aren't going to be too many misread putts going up or down a big tier.  However, I think that subtlety is different.

When greens have subtle breaks, it can be extremely hard to gauge the amount of break to play, or even which way a putt breaks.  

I also think that front to back sloping grens are, for the most part, harder to read, and simply because there are a lot more back to front greens where balls break to the front of the green.

Also, greens close to mountains, or large bodies of water, can be difficult to read sometimes, for the fact that you have to equate how much a valley, the water, etc will affect the amount of break in the putt.

Oh, and grainy greens, like Bermuda, are hard to read, at least for me, because as if reading a regular green isn't hard enough, you have to figure out how much the direction of the grass will alter how the ball breaks.

....and let me introduce to Golf Club Atlas:


the next Johnny Miller

Ryan,

For a rare instance, I agree with Jordan. If the question had been something like "which greens are hardest to putt", or "which greens are most likely to be three jacked", then I would disagree. But, since we're only talking about reading the green, I think subtlety and grain are two major (minor?) factors.

I was thinking along the lines of hardest to putt, at first. A flattish, subtle green may be hard to read, but one is less likely to the three putt (or more) than on a big green with easy to read slopes...but hard to keep the ball by the hole.

Joe

[John_Cullum]

Also, greens close to mountains, or large bodies of water, can be difficult to read sometimes, for the fact that you have to equate how much a valley, the water, etc will affect the amount of break in the putt.

Nearby mountains, valleys, and bodies of water do not affect the break of a putt.

[wsmorrison]

Mottled greens rather than homogeneous greens.  The modern use of A1/A4 greens in SE Pennsylvania have this uniform look that makes reading the slopes much easier than mottled greens.  Merion East intentionally regrassed with several types of Bent grasses and there usually is a little bit of Poa as well.  The various hues are an aesthetically pleasing look on an old golf course but they also make it more difficult to read.

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