Golf courses with extreme greens

[Sven Nilsen]

Barnbougle.

[PCCraig]

Another course that should DEFINITELY be in this conversation is White Bear Yacht Club.

I'm a little surprised it took 22 replies before White Bear was mentioned!

[MCirba]

Scranton and Cape Arundel

Add Hollywood and most of the Walter Travis catalog.

[Tom_Doak]

I guess I'd like to understand the point of this thread.


Most of the courses named are widely considered to be among the best courses in the U.S.  To be sure, there are other courses with severe greens that aren't so good that are being overlooked, because they aren't any good.


Yet I feel sure that there are some people here who want to play the scold ... that "truly great" courses should not resort to such severe greens, and that somehow the other top courses that don't have them are morally superior.




You know you're out there.

[Peter Pallotta]

I didn't have the nerve to ask Tom's question myself, but I'm glad he did.
I saw a laundry list of very good-to-great courses, but couldn't see a point to the thread or a pattern to the answers -- other than perhaps 'proving' that top flight courses can, but don't necessarily have to, have extreme greens.
Hence my earlier post: imagining our golfing ancestors putting some (now) classic greens: Did they have 'fun'? Were they occasionally frustrated? Did they grumble about altering them?
Sure, green speeds have increased; yes, some courses have chosen to remove contour so greens stay 'playable'.
But other courses haven't, and certainly didn't 80 and 70 and 60 years ago.
By what standards and what experience of play are we looking at and judging *today's* extreme greens?
I suppose someone will say it's all subjective.
Maybe it is. But I've tried for a decade to convince myself of that, and haven't been able to.
My bad, I suppose.

[Sven Nilsen]

I guess I'd like to understand the point of this thread.


Most of the courses named are widely considered to be among the best courses in the U.S.  To be sure, there are other courses with severe greens that aren't so good that are being overlooked, because they aren't any good.


Yet I feel sure that there are some people here who want to play the scold ... that "truly great" courses should not resort to such severe greens, and that somehow the other top courses that don't have them are morally superior.




You know you're out there.

Tom:


Does it change your thoughts on the subject if the title said "fun greens" instead of "extreme greens?"


With that in mind, I'd add Olympia Fields South to the mix.  An underrated set, and in my opinion more fun than the other Chicago nominations so far.


Sven

[MCirba]

My point in response is the opposite. 


MOST great courses have extreme (re: interesting, provocative, challenging) greens in some manner for their location, general weather conditions, shot demands, etc., but because these courses have existed and been acknowledged as great or very good for decades we implicitly accept them as part of the package.


That's much more difficult for a new course to pull off for a variety of reasons.  Some go so far as to argue that those Great Courses would not have had greens like that had the Architects been able to benefit from Modern agronomic practices and 13 foot stimpmeter readings.


I would suggest the golf may not have survived had that been the case in the early part of last century.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:


Does it change your thoughts on the subject if the title said "fun greens" instead of "extreme greens?"

Sven:


Sure, it would.  But I didn't put the title on the thread.  The guy who did referenced Streamsong Black, which he had just previously described as having greens that were too severe.


Anybody that's seen a lot of my work knows I am a fan of "fun greens" that some declare too extreme.  I think there is a line that can be crossed, but my tolerance for big contours is obviously different than some others' tolerance.

[Ryan Farrow]

It is a good time to remember that softening some of these golden ages greens can be a good thing (at times) and how important it is  to have flat spots (less than 2%) so high greens speeds can still be playable with super fast greens, case in point, Oakmont.

There have to be a half-dozen greens at Oakmont where there is no hole location less than 2 1/2 %.  Unless they've changed a bunch of them since I saw them.

You may be right, I think the worst offenders are #'s 2, 10, & 12 but i find it hard to believe they do not dip that low considering they are running in the 13-14 range most of the year. I'm not sure a ball would ever stop if they weren't under 3-4% which is why you see some really goofy things on a hole like #2. I would love to get my hands on a greens survey and check what the #'s really are.  I mowed those greens for about 3-4 months but that was over 10 years ago, I am still amazed with the subtlety of most and how so few courses have the side pitch that oakmont does.

[Tom_Doak]

There have to be a half-dozen greens at Oakmont where there is no hole location less than 2 1/2 %.  Unless they've changed a bunch of them since I saw them.

You may be right, I think the worst offenders are #'s 2, 10, & 12 but i find it hard to believe they do not dip that low considering they are running in the 13-14 range most of the year. I'm not sure a ball would ever stop if they weren't under 3-4% which is why you see some really goofy things on a hole like #2. I would love to get my hands on a greens survey and check what the #'s really are.

Ryan:


There is a lot of misinformation out there about slopes on greens, green speeds themselves, and what are the maximum workable combinations.  I know #2 at Oakmont was changed at least once, but I'm not sure about #10 or 12 ... I've never heard it directly.  Of course, every green at Augusta has been changed by now, and some have been changed multiple times since I first saw the course.  Merion, Winged Foot, etc. are all tinkering around with stuff, sadly, in part because of this misinformation, and in part because they are maintaining their greens too fast for the slopes that are there, and don't think about addressing that the easy way.


The TOUR recommends no more than 2.25% slope in a hole location, but there are still a couple of courses on Tour where they can't find four hole locations that qualify.  Keep in mind, the TOUR's standard is based on "what might make one of our players look silly," not "at what point does a putt from above the hole not stop, according to physics".  There's a chart somewhere that shows [if memory serves] that at a green speed of 13 [which means the ball rolls 13 feet on a flat spot when hit at a certain speed], the same ball on a 4% slope will roll 81 feet ... which is a lot, yes, but it's not infinity.  Plus, it's possible to hit the ball a lot softer than it comes off a Stimpmeter.


I have seen enough topo maps of greens to know there are plenty of places in America where a whole green slopes more than 2.25%.  [To cite just one example, when we started work on the 2nd green at Crystal Downs last fall, we found only one spot where the green was less than 3.5%.]  I've also seen enough to believe that Stimpmeter readings are sometimes over-reported ... because if the greens at Augusta and Oakmont or National really were at 14 on the Stimpmeter, there are some greens at each that really wouldn't work.  [It is easy to overreport green speeds on sloped greens, because you can't just take the downhill + uphill average to make the calculation, and it's hard to find a spot that's close to flat.]


Of course, I've also heard superintendents at some such courses tell me of tricks they use to keep their steepest greens playable when they're all being mowed too fast.  One told me he spot-fertilized the more steeply sloped portions of certain greens, so that the ball would roll slower on those!

[Thomas Dai]

TV doesn’t necessarily like fast greens. When a bit of wind gets up and the ball starts to move about on the greens then that can cause delays in play and that in turn effects TV schedules, advertising, tournament related logistics etc etc.
Atb

[Ryan Farrow]

There have to be a half-dozen greens at Oakmont where there is no hole location less than 2 1/2 %.  Unless they've changed a bunch of them since I saw them.

You may be right, I think the worst offenders are #'s 2, 10, & 12 but i find it hard to believe they do not dip that low considering they are running in the 13-14 range most of the year. I'm not sure a ball would ever stop if they weren't under 3-4% which is why you see some really goofy things on a hole like #2. I would love to get my hands on a greens survey and check what the #'s really are.

Ryan:


There is a lot of misinformation out there about slopes on greens, green speeds themselves, and what are the maximum workable combinations.  I know #2 at Oakmont was changed at least once, but I'm not sure about #10 or 12 ... I've never heard it directly.  Of course, every green at Augusta has been changed by now, and some have been changed multiple times since I first saw the course.  Merion, Winged Foot, etc. are all tinkering around with stuff, sadly, in part because of this misinformation, and in part because they are maintaining their greens too fast for the slopes that are there, and don't think about addressing that the easy way.


The TOUR recommends no more than 2.25% slope in a hole location, but there are still a couple of courses on Tour where they can't find four hole locations that qualify.  Keep in mind, the TOUR's standard is based on "what might make one of our players look silly," not "at what point does a putt from above the hole not stop, according to physics".  There's a chart somewhere that shows [if memory serves] that at a green speed of 13 [which means the ball rolls 13 feet on a flat spot when hit at a certain speed], the same ball on a 4% slope will roll 81 feet ... which is a lot, yes, but it's not infinity.  Plus, it's possible to hit the ball a lot softer than it comes off a Stimpmeter.


I have seen enough topo maps of greens to know there are plenty of places in America where a whole green slopes more than 2.25%.  [To cite just one example, when we started work on the 2nd green at Crystal Downs last fall, we found only one spot where the green was less than 3.5%.]  I've also seen enough to believe that Stimpmeter readings are sometimes over-reported ... because if the greens at Augusta and Oakmont or National really were at 14 on the Stimpmeter, there are some greens at each that really wouldn't work.  [It is easy to overreport green speeds on sloped greens, because you can't just take the downhill + uphill average to make the calculation, and it's hard to find a spot that's close to flat.]


Of course, I've also heard superintendents at some such courses tell me of tricks they use to keep their steepest greens playable when they're all being mowed too fast.  One told me he spot-fertilized the more steeply sloped portions of certain greens, so that the ball would roll slower on those!

Tom, I remember watching a presentation by John Zimmers who was the Superintendent at the time, he showed a photo of the 2nd green where part of it was cored out showing the profile of the green and the results from years of drill and fill aerification.  I believe there was only a green expansion done to that green on the back and back right side.  That is what we were told, and you can see the changes to the green shape in google earth, as well as the church pew reconstruction.


The biggest uncertainty for me about the classic greens is that it is so difficult to know what they were really like before Superintendents started to aggressively topdress greens. I'm not sure if you can find that answer by dissecting the green and examining the layers. I have never been involved in such a project.


I appreciate everything you have added, some really great information there. I have been on a walk around with the tour guys while they searched for pin location in advance of a World Cup Event hosted at Mission Hills in China. One interesting fact I gleaned from them was how much space they were looking for on a green tier, they did not want to pin a tiered section of a green unless they had about 7 paces to work with from the top of the slope to an edge of the green or however a level may transition or end. Provides a little insight into what they think is a fair target for the Pros.




Interesting to hear about #2 at Crystal Downs, the green didn't stand out to me as there were some other spots on the course that stole the show and I only walked the course, I'm guessing the sub 3.5% slope was in the swale?


What about the numbers on #11? That is the first green that jumped out to me. I'm not sure about other clubs but I believe the numbers at Oakmont, I have been there with the Assistant Super when they were taking readings but I completely agree that it can be difficult if not impossible to get an accurate read on some greens out there.


As for the creativity of Supers, I don't think I will ever be surprised. The good ones always find a way.

[Mark_Fine]

We talk about putting surfaces like they are the backbone of all great golf courses?  They are actually a relatively recent design trend because for the first several hundred years the game of golf was played, no one gave a shit.  Heck, it is only recently (relative to the age of the game) that golfers stopped digging sand/dirt out of the cup to build a tee right beside the hole to play their shot to the next hole. 



I am all for interesting greens and putting surfaces and sometimes extreme ones are just fine.  But some can be way over the top and while that is cool for miniature golf courses, it can get goofy especially if there is a steady stream of them on a real golf course. 


We talk about golf staying the same and reverting back to "classic" design principles, I wonder if we will ever revert back to where the most important aspect is NOT putting.  Not sure putting was ever meant to be that way! 

[Sam Kestin]

@TomDoak--out of curiosity, what makes the average of an uphill/downhill Stimpmeter reading likely to result in an over-report of the speed of the green?


I'm not arguing that it doesn't--I really have no idea about these kinds of things--but I am curious about the why.

[jeffwarne]

We talk about putting surfaces like they are the backbone of all great golf courses?  They are actually a relatively recent design trend because for the first several hundred years the game of golf was played, no one gave a shit.  Heck, it is only recently (relative to the age of the game) that golfers stopped digging sand/dirt out of the cup to build a tee right beside the hole to play their shot to the next hole. 



I am all for interesting greens and putting surfaces and sometimes extreme ones are just fine.  But some can be way over the top and while that is cool for miniature golf courses, it can get goofy especially if there is a steady stream of them on a real golf course. 


We talk about golf staying the same and reverting back to "classic" design principles, I wonder if we will ever revert back to where the most important aspect is NOT putting.  Not sure putting was ever meant to be that way!

"Not sure putting was ever meant to be that way! "

The skill required for a 1/4 inch backswing is highly over rated-especially when you consider that the speed, slope, and pin placement have been calculated to have a ball just stop rolling near the cup if it has been just barely started rolling.

Try that on a 5% sloped green uphill running at 7-that takes actual judgement and skill differentiation between large and  small strokes.
Want to test a good player-slow them down and use difficult/sloped pins-not speed them up and use the most boring pins (because you have to)

[Thomas Dai]

We talk about golf staying the same and reverting back to "classic" design principles, I wonder if we will ever revert back to where the most important aspect is NOT putting.  Not sure putting was ever meant to be that way!

Nicely described Mark. Rather thought proving actually.
Atb

[Ira Fishman]

For me, the interest in interesting greens is less about the putting than about the pitching and chipping.  Once on the green, the decisions about line and speed generally ones of small degree even on extreme greens.  From off the green, an interesting green presents options and therefore challenging and fun decisions.


Ira

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff - yes, watching the early  footage and seeing the sharp wristy 'rap' that Nelson at PV, Snead at Pebble, and Lema at Mid-Ocean etc needed to use - with a Bullseye no less - to get their ball up & over the slow-running contours, when even a two footer coming back on those grainy/bumpy greens was a real 'stroke earned', it does seem that when you got to the putting surface back then the adventure was only getting started. I watch an episode of the old Shell's and then go out to play on today's greens with an Anser in my hand and it feels like cheating.
Ira - yes, that's my experience too 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Ryan,


Tour says 2.25%, Pete Dye (after converting his inches per foot to percent) says 2.25%, and my experience says 2.25%.  I think I will go for 2.25% max slope on cupping areas of most greens.


Actually, the PGA and Masters had a system, at least at one time, where a digital level, placed twice at 90 deg. at any proposed pin spot should read 5.5 or less (back half of green) and 5.0 max on the front half of the green, or if 0% in one direction, 4% in the other.  If you figure a 2.75% slope each way (or 2.5% on the green front) and recall your high school geometry, you find that the maximum slope will come in just under 4%, technically 3.89%, or at 2.5% each way, about 3.54%.


Whenever I have gone to a course with 13 greens, and measure cup locations members complain about, they exceed 5.5 total on the cross measurement.  Borderlines come in at 5-5.4 total measurements.  A 2.25% down slope, with 2.25% cross slope would come in at a real max slope of 3.18%, and I can see why the USGA recommends 3% slopes as the max for cupping for average players.


If steeper slopes potentially "embarrass" top players, imagine how the bottom of the field and average golfers feel?


Some complain my greens are too steep, and my swales are still at 1.8-2.25%, whereas some pros are using 1.5% swales, which I don't believe drain well enough, but at those grades, no one complains except the superintendent.


That's how I view it anyway.  My clients can't typically afford to build a lot of green for showy effect, nor do they want to water and spray more than they have to, so they want them all cuppable, generally about 6-6500 SF.  To me, the 4+% greens TD does are just wasted, in my specific applications.  Sure do look neat though!  If I had a sand site, or cheap sand, I would try to convince my client that big greens would be a competitive advantage over other courses.  If the super or management company was already on board, not sure it would fly, but I would try.

[Joe Hellrung]

I'd put Dormie Club on this list.

[Kalen Braley]

I disagree with the premise of putts being inconsequential.  The average golfer spends about 1/3 of their entire strokes in a round on the green. and its an after thought?


I'm calling BS to this one.

[Carl Rogers]

Ballyhack, Roanoke VA

[Tom_Doak]

@TomDoak--out of curiosity, what makes the average of an uphill/downhill Stimpmeter reading likely to result in an over-report of the speed of the green?

Because gravity is not a linear function.  If the green is at 10, but you're rolling the ball on a slope, the ball might travel 9 feet going uphill, but it will travel more than 11 feet going downhill.  So you can't average the two numbers to get the true green speed ... you have to average the sums of the two readings squared.  Which most green crew workers aren't going to do.


It seems like it won't make much difference, but when you get to higher green speeds and higher slopes, it makes a huge difference.  Consider my example of 4% at a speed of 13, rolling 81 feet downhill ... if you average anything with 81 it's going to be really high.  Nobody would take a reading on a 4% slope, but averaging the readings on a 2% slope will goose the Stimpmeter reading a foot or two from what it really is.  And you can be sure there are some clubs that don't mind doing this.

[Tom_Doak]

For Jeff B and Mark F:


I'm with you, but by other means:  Let's slow the damned greens down a bit, not take the character out of them.


P.S. to Jeff:  I've built plenty of greens with areas of 4% slope - and more! - but I haven't built a green where there was an intended hole location that steep since Lost Dunes.  We normally stay at 3% or under now, though in some circumstances I'm okay with an instance of 3.5%, because I am working with so many existing clubs where that still works.  If 3.5% is okay for Royal Melbourne, it's okay for me.

[Sean_A]

To me the issue is more about balance.  It is good to have a small handful of outrageous greens just as it is a few subtle greens.  If green speeds prevent the development of extreme greens then it is an issue of speed, not slope.  If we tempered speeds to 9ish a lot more could be accomplished in terms of green variety and creativity.  It is a shame archies have to second themselves and tone down their skills...just writing that makes me shake my head...it makes no sense. 

Ciao