Mowing patterns at Oakland Hills

[Darren_Kilfara]

Forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere, but I have to say that as disappointed as I was in the American performance and the Sutton captaincy this past weekend, that disappointment paled in comparison to the disgust I had for the presentation of the golf course. Since the 1996 US Open, I had forgotten what I great course Oakland Hills actually is, or at least appears to be on television...but to take such a wonderful rolling, natural property and then criss-cross its fairways with stripes of varying widths, some of which intersected at oblique angles (e.g. as some fairways merged with the aprons around the greens), was borderline obscene to me. My wife took her first look at the Ryder Cup on TV Friday evening and saw the 10th fairway, heaving in a swirl of stripes that made it look like a tie-dye T-shirt, and laughed. "It looks like they're playing on foam," she said.

I suppose one of the (failed) US tactics must have been to confuse the Euros, between the fairways and the American team shirts, with stripe-overload. Apart from that, can I just ask if anyone actually likes it when a golf course looks as stripey as Oakland Hills did? I obviously hated it, but I will certainly respect anyone who can make a case for the defense...

Cheers,
Darren

[Jeff_Mingay]

Oakland Hills is an amazing property. But much of great contour throughout the property is covered by long grass and trees. The golf is squished into narrow corridors on a vast piece of interesting ground. It's very unfortunate it in my opinion.  

I agree with Darren ,too. Too much of the Oakland Hills property is groomed.  It's a large tract with plenty of space for "naturalized" areas that would present some texture at an otherwise "green" golf course.

Long story short, Oakland Hills is a fantastic property for golf currently under-utilized.  

[John_McMillan]

Too much of the Oakland Hills property is groomed.  It's a large tract with plenty of space for "naturalized" areas that would present some texture at an otherwise "green" golf course.

One of the realities of championship golf in the 21'st century is corporate tents and pavillions.  Since Oakland Hills was covered in these at the Ryder Cup, I'm not sure how one judges how the "naturalized" areas are utilized for some texture.  

[TEPaul]

Darren:

I completely agree---those mowing patterns made the course look like a "crazy quilt" that looked way too "fussy". Never underestimate the architectural investigative power of the "Snoopy" or ""Outback Steakhouse" blimp!!

[Brad Klein]

Couldn't disagree more. The striping of fairways is entirely superficial. As for the greens, the "presentation" was phenomenal, thanks to a combination of growth regulators and cooler weather that helped the Poa annua take a back seat to the bentgrass and allowed the greens to roll and the contours to come through as they never have before - just watching tapes from the 1996 US Open (very un-smooth, inconsistent) shows the contrast and shows how wonderful these Ross-putting surfaces still are - better than ever, actually.

Yes, I'd prefer if the tee shot landing areas were wider. But when they hit it 290, they don't make use of the wider fairway angles that Ross had originally provided, as on the 11th hole left. You can blame course set ups for this all you want, but when players are so good and so long and straight (blame the USGA for that) then providing the original width at the 220-250 yard zones is superfluous.

Compared to most tournament set ups, this one was pretty good, including softer bunkers that did not allow the golf ball to roll down into firm, flat lies and allowed the bunkers to play as relative hazards for a change.

[Gary_Nelson]

The mowing patterns didn't look terrible from this spectator's view.   I suppose the blimp view might look strange but it wasn't so bad from the ground.

I also liked the real soft sand.  Lots of fried-egg lies.  Lots of bunker shots with unpredictable results.  Not so easy up-and-downs.

[Steve_Lemmon]

Brad:  is the striping of fairways entirely superficial, or can it reflect a mowing pattern that is intended to impede or not (a la Augusta)?  Of course, at Augusta, the pattern used to be in the direction of the green, but now are against the player to try to slow down the ball.  The patterns this weekend seemed to be diagonal criss crosses.   Is that an intentional part of the set up, or is it merely to be pretty like on a major league baseball field?

[Steve_Lemmon]

You also have to like a set up which provides a shank on the last day (Garcia from nasty rough).

[TEPaul]

It's time for me to ask a question the answer to which is probably more than obvious. But are those putting greens at Oakland Hills really all original Donald Ross?

If so, it would mean that despite redesign waves on that course, much like Aronimink, the original Ross putting greens on both courses somehow miraculously remained completely intact!

[Gary_Nelson]

Tom,

I don't think all the greens are in the original location.  A friend of mine worked the Oakland Hills grounds crew in the '80s.  He told me about a project where they moved a green, a strip of sod at a time.  Maybe they recreated the contours but he told me the location of the green was shifted (left or right??).

Gary

[Darren_Kilfara]

Brad - just to clarify, I was talking entirely about the visual presentation of the golf course (re: mowing patterns), not the actual set-up of how the course played (re: fairway widths, green speeds, bunker consistency, etc.). I thought the greens were a touch on the fast side - some of the wilder contours would have been fairer had they been about a foot slower - but apart from that I completely agree with you that the course was perfectly set up regarding how it played. How it looked, though, is another matter...I abhor the thought that some greens committee chairman will have watched the Ryder Cup, thought "We should make our golf course look like that!", and will now do everything in his power to make a perfectly ordinary set of fairways look like a chessboard or the outfield at Shea Stadium or a road map of Manhattan or a Grateful Dead concert.

Cheers,
Darren

[John_McMillan]

TE and Gary -

If a green was moved, it was a matter of just a few feet in any direction.  The greens and routing are all Ross.  You can look at Geoff Shackelford's book, "The Golden Age of Golf Design" on page  124 and see Ross' map of the course.  It is virtually idential (with a few holes lengthened) to the current routing.  There are more bunkers on the current course - courtesy of RTJ

[Jeff_Mingay]

John,

I've been to Oakland Hills many times when the property wasn't covered with corporate tents. Again, that vast property would look nice with some well-placed "naturalized" areas in my opinion. It's very "green", and the property is pretty much mown wall-to-wall.

And Brad,

I'm not referring to Ross' original design, or taking the remarkable golfing abilities of the Ryder Cup players into consideration, or talking about the great job Steve Cook and his crew did with the greens. All I'm saying is, there's a lot of neat contour throughout the South course that's currently under-utlized because is covered by rough and trees.  

[Brad Klein]

Jeff Mingay, yes, the contours and the slopes on that Oakland Hills site are phenomenal and would be in play in an earlier era.

As for stripes and lawns, the sad thing is that the best selling turfgrass/turfcare book in the last 10 years - even made the cover of USA Today - is by the (now) greenkeeper at Fenway Park and is all about ornamental patterning of lawns. "Picture Perfect: Mowing Techniques for Lawns, Landscapes, and Sports," by David R. Mellor (Ann Arbor Press, 2001) is a sad exemplar of wasted skill - mowing patterns for lawns. So green chairmen have already been emulating Augusta National (or at least baseball diamonds) for some time now.

The basic Oakland Hills greens are in place and with the slopes as Ross designed them. You cannot move a green one strip of sod at a time. RTJ tinkered with the backs and fronts of some surfaces prior to majors in 1951, 1972 and 1979, but not their centers. Let's hope that Rees Jones doesn't start moving whole greens around (there's a proposal to shift the 3rd green back to gain 20 yards!) prior to the 2008 PGA.

[John_McMillan]

I've been to Oakland Hills many times when the property wasn't covered with corporate tents. Again, that vast property would look nice with some well-placed "naturalized" areas in my opinion. It's very "green", and the property is pretty much mown wall-to-wall.

My point is, if you create a "naturalized" area when there isn't a tournament, you make it more difficult to set up the tents when there is one.  For a course which has hosted 2 PGA's, 2 US Opens, and a Ryder Cup in the last 30 years, with another PGA in the pipeline, this may be a consideration.  

[Jeff_Mingay]

Not to harp on this, John. But how can longer grass in a certain area make it more difficult to set-up a tent? I don't get it.

Brad: I've also heard a rumour that Rees' and co. have proposed moving the fifth green back.

[TEPaul]

"RTJ tinkered with the backs and fronts of some surfaces prior to majors in 1951, 1972 and 1979, but not their centers."

Brad:

Why do you suppose RTJ did that? I'm just interested to know anyway but there's also a particular reason I'd like to know. At my course RTJ came over in the 1960s (one of the members heard he was at Merion) because we'd been asking some architects how we could put in a practice range. In the space of about an hour RTJ recommended taking the fairway on #10 for the range and taking the second half of #12 for the first half of #10 and moving #13 over from a dogleg left to a slight dogleg right to make room for his rerouting of the second half of #12. In the process RTJ redesigned the first half of #10 the second half of #12 and the first half of #13 including a new 9th and 12th green.

None of that redesign work of RTJ at GMGC has been all that popular with one notable exception. As he stood and looked at the 10th green (a really good Maxwell green) from the old 12th fairway he mentioned that that green didn't set up too badly from about 100 yards to the right (from the old 12th fairway) of where it was designed to play into from and recommended to the guy who brought him over from Merion that it would be much better if he did what he called "pull a tongue down on that green to the pond in front of it"---the pond was more on the right side on Maxwell's 10th green).

And that's what he did on the 10th green and it's just a fantastic addition of about 1/4 more greenspace on the front of that green. It works just beautifully with the rest of the Maxwell green and it added a great pin position just over the pond.

So I'm interested to know if you know exactly what he did to some of the fronts and back of those Ross Oakland Hills greens and why.

[John_McMillan]

Jeff,

I'm not sure what you mean by a "natural" area.  Bushes or flowers would certainly interfere with a tent.

Moving the 5th green seems kind of silly.  It is already near the property line in that area of the course, so you might gain an extra 5 or 10 yards, which doesn't seem like a significant factor on playability.

[TEPaul]

John:

By "naturalized" I think Jeff Mingay means adding some areas of higher fescue grass and such in areas sort of out of play for a more "natural" look. I've never been to Oakland Hills but if it's basically a "parkland" style golf course, personally I wouldn't recommend adding areas of "naturalized" fescue. I don't think it looks right on most parkland style golf courses. That's exactly what Aronimink did initially with their restoration (Aronimink is a "parkland" style course), it was really unpopular and basically they've now removed most of it to the betterment of the look and play of the course, in my opinion.

[Anthony_Nysse]

OAKLAND HILLS IS A COUNTRY CLUB...not a golf club, most country clubs are notorious for there presentation..."country clubbers" loves stripes...the more the merrier....

[Jeff_Mingay]

I agree, John. Moving the fifth green is a silly idea. It's a very challenging green as is, at a 455 yard hole. To sacrifice that neat old green for an additional 10-15 yards would be idiotic.  

Tom's right. By "naturalized" areas, I mean longer grasses. Not bushes and flowers.

Interesting that Aronimink introduced some such areas and have since removed them, Tom. The way I see, some natural grass areas at Oakland Hills could work in the same way they work at Ross-designed courses in the Northeast, at places like Essex County Club, Salem, and The Orchards.

[tlavin]

This strikes me as a somewhat silly post, but there is a definite difference in mowing between the PGA and the USGA.  The PGA likes the diagonal stripe look, because it is more visually dramatic on camera.  The USGA likes the half-and-half look in which the mowers cut in two different directions longitudinally along the entire hole.  That is an old-time look.  Essentially, you have half of the fairway that looks dark and half that looks bright, depending on the direction of the mower.  It has absolutely no difference on play.

[Steve_Lemmon]

At Augusta they think it makes 6-7 yards of difference.  Is that because of the fact that it is rye?

[tlavin]

At Augusta they think it makes 6-7 yards of difference.  Is that because of the fact that it is rye?

I have no idea, but remember, my motto is "often wrong, never in doubt".

[W.H. Cosgrove]

The greens were fabulous!  No question about that.  Thak God I didn't have to try to putt them.  

The fairways and approaches, however were a bit busy! What this did for the golf course was to show every ripple in the fairways.  Kind of like a somewhat round individual like my self wearing a striped golf shirt.  

What I wonder about is the eqipment used to burn those patterns into the fairways and approaches.  The patterns would lead me to believe that the approaches were walk mowed and the fairways were cut with very small riding equipment. Can any one verify this to me?  

The last question is this good forgolf?  The average member is now going to want this kind of treatment at his club......raising budgets by what figure?