Thomas, I think you must be right or that the greens have been sanded heavily or maybe that was the dew or ....
In the end the stimp is pretty irrelevant as unless you play that green when it is done then the reading is not what the green will be. The danger with stimp as a measurement is it becomes the defacto measurement of quality with higher being better leading to unsuitable readings being aimed for which lead to courses becoming silly.
Ryan is right but an intelligent greenkeeper should also know what to share and put it in context. Ryan, just out of interest what are the smoothness/trueness readings at your course? How are they measured? This strikes me as the best and most relevant info for greens as far as a golfer is concerned.
Jon
Jon
STRI Trueness Meter.
Smoothness Target is between 16-25mm/m. Trueness Target between 5-10mm/m. Our best readings in peak season were 14.48 & 8.98. Huge swathes of the year we are outside of target though.
It's a really good piece of kit to use a couple of times per year in conjunction with a Stimp, Clegg Hammer (firmness) theta probe (moisture), the latter our green staff use more frequently.
I've had good feedback from sharing these and agronomist reports with members who are interested. Those who aren't can just delete. It helps focus the importance on overall quality rather than solely on speed.
I would say Ryan has done a good job there of explaining why stimp readings alone are a dangerous thing to put out there. It's a case of putting information in context, i.e. putting stimp readings alongside the sort of data Ryan is referring to in order to give a balanced picture. And if that's too much for some people, better that they opt out of the arena than draw conclusions based upon overly simpified analysis. The information Ryan refers to is available for members at many clubs and I approve of that. Dumbing down though to the point where we have a stimp reading on a board by the first tee is like trying to explain a complex issue through a tabloid headline. Better then to present this discussion as Kyle does and the wheat will separate itself from the chaff!
Peter,
The contours are someone dampened by slow turf but that is part and parcel of the game. It's October and anyone who watched The Open at St. Andrews will recall just how lush and green summer looked this year, meaning a stimp of 6 is simply a product of a wet period. Some of golf's worst horror stories, particularly those involving club members, stem from an ignorance which assumes that, given enough money, you can beat nature. Just look at the errors of the 80's and 90's when new courses were built on rice fields with the perceived wisdom that man had overcome the need for fine grasses on sandy soils. Now those same courses, courses which opened to much fanfare at the time and claims of greatness, are on the bargain bucket rota and might be glimpsed whilst late night channel hopping leads one to the Europro Tour. The point is, the greens are slow because nature has dictated so. Obviously I appreciate browner than brown fairways and would rather the irrigation system was permanently retired but that's for summer. Seasonal variety is all part and parcel of proper golf.
As for the rest of the membership, I'd suggest that most members would prefer that winter didn't happen but they don't need a stimp reading to tell them that. The stimp reading of itself doesn't influence their enjoyment any which way, unless their enjoyment is merely a product of an ego inflating number.
When I was actually out there they were probably more like 8 as I suspect the reading was from early morning when the rain was about but they were no more than 8. One of the endless problems of course in every club reporting penis size, er, green speed is that exaggeration becomes the norm, meaning most people have little to no idea what a green running at 11 or 12 is really like. 6 then sounds VERY slow but most people would guess a genuine 6 was actually something like an 8.
Sean,
For a bit of context, if they are currently at 6, even if they were at 7 or 8, the greens at Leckford were a 4 or 5.