The Morris Method - Green speeds made to order

[John Connolly]

Mike Morris, super at Crystal Downs, developed in 2000 a system whereby greens were adjusted based on membership feedback on whether they liked the green speeds after playing a round - but not being told what the stimp reading was. If the majority liked the greens rolling at X ft. (known only to the super I'm imagining), he tried to deliver that product. It was done to deliver the "experience" they desired without asking them what "stimp number" they wanted. Mostly, I suspect, because players are notoriously bad at guessing the stimp reading. A very novel approach and one that I believe has paid dividends, as a thread in 2012 had member Tom Doak saying it was still being employed. I think MSU's course does it as well. My questions - Is anyone else finding success with the "The Morris Method"?

The article describing it is below.

http://grounds-mag.com/mag/grounds_maintenance_need_speed/

[Mark Pavy]

Thanks for posting the link.

[Tom_Doak]

John:

The problem with Mike's "method" is human nature.  When asked whether the greens were too fast, too slow, or just right, not many members ever want to admit they're too fast ... so the speed they ask for is higher than what's reasonable.  [At Crystal Downs, I believe they were asking for 11.5 on the Stimp, on one of the world's most difficult sets of greens.]

I think the same dynamic is in play in green committee meetings generally ... nobody wants to be the wimp who suggests lower speeds, or reducing the maintenance budget.

Crystal Downs' greens last year were slower than any year in the last ten, after all the winter damage.  From my point of view, the course was more fun to play than it has been in a long time.  I just wish people could decouple "speed" from "good", but Mike Morris' research did not get into that.

[JimB]

I have suggested to our green committee and superintendent that our tiered MacKenzie greens have a natural internal control. If you roll or place a ball at the top of a major slope and it stays put, they are too slow. If the ball rolls smoothly to the bottom of the slope and stops somewhere on the lower tier they are about right. If the ball races down the slope, across the tier and off the green they are too fast. I have not heard a Stimp number mentioned since.

[JESII]

Jim B,

Sounds like a reasonable way of managing/meeting expectations for good playability. I've often wondered, when people speak of slowing greens down, if an unintended consequence (that I would abhor) is for balls to stop on the face of certain slopes on a green. Obviously, it would be a sliding scale...


Tom D,

Strange comment there. Sounds like you're saying people can't be trusted to answer an anonymous survey honestly to their own detriment.

I haven't been to Crystal Downs and don't know Mike Morris. Is he still employing his method. If not, I'd be curious why...

[Adam Clayman]

Giving people what they want is antithetical to the sport. Golfers should have to deal with what they get.

Great to hear about the more reasonable speeds at CD. If any club can take the lead on such an important issue, it's them.

[Jud_T]

Tom D,

Strange comment there. Sounds like you're saying people can't be trusted to answer an anonymous survey honestly to their own detriment.

Jim,

Anyone who's played the 11th at CD at the "consensus" speed would quickly realize that this may be a case where group-think isn't the best methodology.

[Brent Hutto]

Giving customers or club members what they want is hardly a surprising strategy.

Nor is it a surprise that most golfers prefer fast greens.

Only on this forum are those two ideas considered unusual in the slightest.

[JESII]

Giving people what they want is antithetical to the sport. Golfers should have to deal with what they get.

Great to hear about the more reasonable speeds at CD. If any club can take the lead on such an important issue, it's them.

So are you saying the notion of running the survey itself was flawed?

[Adam Clayman]

No. It's data. One needs to know not only the sport, inside and out, but, also the nature of the people that play.

[jeffwarne]

Giving people what they want is antithetical to the sport. Golfers should have to deal with what they get.

Great to hear about the more reasonable speeds at CD. If any club can take the lead on such an important issue, it's them.

Nonsense. Golfers pay money to have a product provided to them. If the consensus at one club is to pay for the greens to be "too fast" for Adam Clayman's taste then he is free to go pay somebody elsewhere to provide him slow greens.

When a golfer shows up to play golf he plays the course as he finds it that day. That does not extend to mean that he is forced to pay to play on a course that he doesn't like for whatever reason.

Again this forum seems gobsmacked to find that most golfers prefer fast greens and that courses tend to find a way to give them what they want.

Brent,
with respect,
I know you don't like slow greens-most don't.
But I'm pretty sure you haven't often played the speeds I'm often referring to.
I'm guessing what you consider fast, would be considered slow for many in the land of large budgets and northeastern big budget bent greens
We all like "fast" greens-but if greens are 13 and we consider that normal, do we like 16's better?

My only gripe is when the vocal(often clueless) minority drives the agenda, so Crystal Downs move is a step in the right direction

[Tommy Williamsen]

Some greens were designed for faster speeds.  Four Streams is a good example. It is an excellent Steve Smyers course outside DC.  The breaks and slope are, for the most part, pretty subtle.  When the greens run at 9 there is very little break.  The greens need to run about 11 for them to show their true colors.

[Brent Hutto]

Jeff,

I have edited my response to eliminate its sour tone.

For my part it is totally possible to have greens that are too fast for my game. That's why I think no-numbers "too fast", "too slow" type of feedback is great. I certainly wouldn't have any embarrassment in checking the "too fast" box if I'd just played on Crystal Downs green tricked up to supersonic speeds. Especially on an *anonymous* survey!

I thought it was interesting in that other thread that the survey showed a "consensus" of sorts among the listed courses that settled in somewhere in the Stimp 10's as the most common speeds during the 2008-2009 time frame. I doubt that many courses would find greens Stimping 11 to be perceived as "too slow" among their members, assuming they aren't so silly as to tell the members the numbers  

[JMEvensky]

Some greens were designed for faster speeds.  Four Streams is a good example. It is an excellent Steve Smyers course outside DC.  The breaks and slope are, for the most part, pretty subtle.  When the greens run at 9 there is very little break.  The greens need to run about 11 for them to show their true colors.

My course is the same way. Not every set of greens has bold slopes and contours.

[John Connolly]

A fundamental question amongst all of this is:

Do fast greens test something different in the player than slow ones? Put another way, how does the critical examination of a player's putting skill vary between greens of significantly different speed? Isn't that one reasonable focus of discussion here?

Or maybe it's just about what people prefer to putt on.

[Brent Hutto]

Fast greens test your nerve because you can easily make a serious mistake leading to a 3-putt or 4-putt.

Slow greens test your patience because you hole out very few putts of any length.

I have better nerves than patience, apparently.

[Thomas Dai]

May I suggest that quality and consistancy of the sward is highly important. Slow greens (ie longer grass) can be just fine when using a putter with higher than these days usual loft (say 6*-7* instead of 3*-4* loft) providing the sward is of good quality and consistancy.

Back in yee olde days, greens were both slower and swards weren't generally as good or consistant as they are now.

These days however, we have the tech/ability to have high quality and consistant longer grass sward so could we could go back to slower greens with probably little difference in scoring if we were prepared to have with more loft on our putters?

atb

[Mark Pearce]

At least one category of golfers seem willing to say that greens are too fast.  My home club was used for Open Championship Regional qualifying two seasons ago for the first time in a five year span.  Later that year I played golf with one of the R&A officials who had officiated during that qualifying competition.  He commented that the R&A and competitors had been really pleased with the course and they were only asking for one change for the next season's qualifying competition.  Both competitors and officials felt the greens had been too fast (I gather that the green keeper had got them up to 12 on the Stimpmeter, which is pretty damn quick for North East England).  There are certainly a few greens on the course where that sort of speed would make the course unplayable for a hack like me.

[Sean_A]

There is way too much focus on green speeds and not enough focus on green firmness.  The common belief is fast greens equal good greens...that is complete nonsense.  Firm greens make up a lot of ground for lack of speed.  Firm, true rolling greens whose speed matches the boldness of the contours/slopes while still maintaining a healthy stand should be the goal. If the meld is good on interesting greens going above 9-10 on the stimp is silly.  All it does is cost money to slow the game down all in the name of some he man macho deal.  It gets awful boring watching handicap players 3 putt. 

Ciao

[Jon Wiggett]

Most golfers only say they want fast greens because that is what they are told they want. It is what the pros comment on when playing tournaments and so Joe Public thinks fast means good. It does not matter how fast you make greens good putters will adjust very quickly to the speed. However your average player (20 handicap +) struggle above 10ft.

Are flat greens really designed or just built?

Jon

[JESII]

Agreed that firmness can make up for a lot but the thread is more about communication to players. The stimpmeter genie is well out of the bottle and not gong back in. This is a way to change the conversation from "how fast are your greens?"...and that's a good thing

People, me included, think 11 feet is better than 10 feet if everything else is equal. I wonder if I went out and played any course in the world how I would answer this survey question.

One major impact of slower greens, that I would mark against them, is that the ball breaks less. If I have a 20 foot putt across a mild slope, I like a couple feet of break...

[Mark Pearce]

Surely that's only a problem if the slopes are only mild.  Dramatically sloped greens are impossible at high speeds, so slower speeds are better.  As with many things, there is no one right answer.  Green speeds should match the greens.

[JESII]

Agreed with your last sentence whole-heartedly...but what does "match" mean in the context of Crystal Downs, the method of Mike Morris and Tom's opinion (including intimate knowledge of CD) that the members inflate their enjoyment for sake of having fast greens?

Well, I can say this. I've not seen NGLA, Oakmont, Augusta or St Andrews but they are on the top of my list of greens I'd like to see at some point. That said, I know Pine Valley's greens very well having spent 5 years caddying there and have played another 30 or 40 rounds over the last 20 years. From what I hear, Pine Valley's greens hold their own in this group of greats with regards to interest, challenge, slope and contour. I can assure you, they are better at 11 feet than at 9 feet and the firmer the better.

[Jon Wiggett]

Agreed with your last sentence whole-heartedly...but what does "match" mean in the context of Crystal Downs, the method of Mike Morris and Tom's opinion (including intimate knowledge of CD) that the members inflate their enjoyment for sake of having fast greens?

Well, I can say this. I've not seen NGLA, Oakmont, Augusta or St Andrews but they are on the top of my list of greens I'd like to see at some point. That said, I know Pine Valley's greens very well having spent 5 years caddying there and have played another 30 or 40 rounds over the last 20 years. From what I hear, Pine Valley's greens hold their own in this group of greats with regards to interest, challenge, slope and contour. I can assure you, they are better at 11 feet than at 9 feet and the firmer the better.

Jim,

re: PV's greens. Could your like for the greens being fast be down to them altering the green contours, at least in part to cope with faster greens? I am very much of the opinion that firmness makes a whole course play faster and that TOC stimping at 10 and F&F are still quicky enough to make even the best players nervous due to the contours.

Jon

[Garland Bayley]

...
Do fast greens test something different in the player than slow ones?...

Fast greens test approach shot ability. They test short game ability when the green is missed. Testing putting would seem to me to be the least of the worries.