Am I out there in deep left field or does this have any merit?

Great question and I am curious to see the responses.  It always takes me a few rounds to get somewhat used to it, and make the adjustments to my golf game ... of course, I could be in left field with you ...

Mike

Hybrid bermuda, grown on sand, can play just as firm and fast as anything. It's all about management, folks.

There was a thread not too long ago about sweepers vs. strikers. On tight, tuff bermuda, you better be a striker.

Matt, were the courses you played marketed towards resort play? Hmm....lush, green......that ought to do it........

Joe

Matt Ward,

Bermuda in mid summer in South Florida plays differently from Bermuda in mid winter in South Florida, although certain grasses are closing the gap.

Many Bermuda courses overseed during the winter, with the result heavily dependent upon the weather.

I don't think you can get USGA Am or Open conditions on Bermuda in the summer in South Florida.

There is much more merit to this topic than this thread is revealing so far. I play at all the clubs down here both in the summer and the winter, and conditioning is so so important.

There are wonderful greens superintendents and awful ones. Grass cut too high and overwatered is the main problem.

The newer grasses, better greenskeepers, less watering, make both the turf grass and the putting surfaces just fine. I putt on some greens that are nearly perfect and ones I hate because they are too long and I have to slug the ball.

The roughs are another story. I takes a lot of practice to learn the shots around the greens, especially the buried shot with the grass growing against you. Noone seems to master that shot.

Putting is easier up north on bent grass, no question about it. I grew up on it. The grain is strong down here.

But yes, quality golf can be played here.

Michael Moore,

Obviously.

 

Joe

I know my pal GeoffreyC calls Bermuda a "noxious weed", and I have to say I tend to agree.

Of course, I've always been a "sweeper", as well as the type of putter who prefers to die the ball at the hole.  Neither works well on Brillo, I've found.  

I consider myself a really good putter, but by the time I came home from my last trip to Florida, I had a case of the shakes.

It didn't help that the ball was plugging in the fairway on some of the courses I played, so perhaps like many suggest here, it's a matter of conditioning.

Redanman said "You guys are Pussies" I could not have said it better. Matt, there has been a move for the last 5 plus years toward new strains of burmuda that Bill noted which are great putting surfaces year round. There are still some courses which are old school on this and the USGA advisory guys are part of the problem there. However if the greens are slow now then I do not know when they are going to be good short of a tournment. The burmuda does make for a very interesting short game and one must develope a lot of skill to play it. I think that is a good thing. Rough is rough. The hay in the UK is not to be desired either if par or birdie is your goal. PW and Sw are commom tools of choice if getting out is your plan. I grew up in a world that anything longer than a 7 iron was not usable in the rough. You tried to get all the power you could with top spins to get all the forward movement possible. The plan was to hit it straight or pay a price. Now we have 7 wood and utlity clubs which do move the ball 180 plus from the rough. I think the new strains of burmuda are great and brought the total game to the same level that one gets in the summer on bent etc in the north. BTB burmuda fairways are just fine and great if the drainage is good. Pat, I am not sure where is S florida a course worthy of the Open is other than Seminole. Of course I do not think Torrey Pines S is worth either.

I will give you the US Am without debate lol. However I do think any of the them will be or should be a US Open course. However i say that without having seen Pine Tree.

Since I was brought into this I will certainly admit to the quote about burmuda being a noxious weed.  I'll stand by that statement.  

1- I don't have the strength to advance the ball out of burmuda rough.  
2- balls instantly dropping to ground level below the grass is not my idea of a good playing surface.
3- because of #2 creative shotmaking aroung the greens is diminished.

I'd like to thank my friends for reminding everyone that I like pussies. That is what they said isn't it?   I can also say with certainty that my buddy Mike Cirba also likes pussies so Bill was correct on all accounts.



Now to my OTHER answer.  This is what I was going to respond with before I read the whole discussion.  

If anyone has been down to Seminole and played shortly before the Coleman tournament as I did winter before last (Brad, Corey and Gene can attest) would never say that Burmuda can't support quality golf.  The course was very firm and fast.  The greens were equally in line with the approaches and fairways and they were true and fast.  These were ideal playing conditions and especially with the WIND which was 2-3 clubs.

That a course in South Carolina is switching to bent answers the question.  The director of maintenance (I am sure he has a more impressive title) at a premier 36-hole golf facility in coastal SE told me that if given the choice, he would maintain bent greens at his club as opposed to the new dwarf bermudas he was responsible for.  Not only were the dwarf bermudas (Tiff-Eagle, I believe) very labor intensive to maintain at good speeds with minimal grain, they had to fight the transition periods twice a year and the greens were in "like-bent" conditions for only a very short time.

In the D/FW area, those courses positioning themselves as "quality" have bent grass greens.  Colonial CC, probably the first course in this part of the country to use bent, refuses to switch despite having redone their greens several times.  Because of its river-bottom location and huge trees, it is a prime candidate for a hardier grass, but a switch to bermuda is very unlikely to happen.

My home course has Champions bermuda on the greens and a lot of people rave about it.  The greens look good, but they putt more like recently aereated bent.  You can hit three putts with similar strokes from the same spot 10' away, and the ball can do three different things.  For those who find this interesting and challenging, my hat is off to you.  A sure way to ruin a perfectly fluid and rythmic putting stroke is to spend some time on bermuda greens.

From the standpoint of fairways, that is another story.  Like Bob, I too have played on firm common bermuda where the ball runs a long ways.  Watch #11 at the Colonial NIT when the course does not get a lot of rain and you'll see 50 yards of run (bermuda 419 fairways).   The softness may have a little to do with the thickness and strength of the grass, but over-watering is the biggest culprit.  In fact, one of the reasons many of our SW courses have such wet entries is that superintendents over-water the greens in order to make them more receptive.  The water has to run some place, with surface drainage often designed to the front of the greens.

The only thing worse than Bermuda is the over-watered, pock-marked, thin slop that often passes for bent grass in hot climates.  

Truthfully, I've seen great bermuda greens, and others which fit Lou's description of the same putt breaking 3 different ways.  

But, I've yet to see bent grass holding up well anywhere in the southern summer.