Fixated with the perfect green?

JustOne

JustOne

Ryder Cup Winner
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Should greens be perfect or does it matter? Back when golf started they pretty much used to stick a flag in a field and it was the first person to get the ball in the hole, is it necessary for greens to be a perfectly smooth piece of glass nowadays or have we been tainted by watching it on TV and think that we are being cheated if our greens don't look like that?

Could/should greens be limited to something like 8 on the stimp?.. or even less? Should it matter if they are bobbly, surely that makes it more of a test?

I've seen arguments that bunkers shouldn't be raked as they are supposed to be hazards so trying to avoid them should be more important that having them in perfect condition... so what's your take on the putting surface?
 
I think what you have a fair right to expect are greens that roll "true"(ish). Then good putts aren't thrown off line or start bobbling all over the place. Pace is unimportant and one of the tests the golfer has to pass on each different day/ course.

To revert back to "fields with flags" is a bit of a Concorde moment, the technology and knowledge is there to produce good greens so why not use it??
 
I like smooth, fast greens. I can putt pretty well, and feel that I make my score around the green.
If it was to be different, then it would have to be different across the board.
One of the reasons I don't watch much televised golf is that here I am, playing on slow winter greens, and on telly, they are playing on a billiard table, running at 12+.

On the subject of bunkering, it took 9 months of work to get the bunkers at the grove up to tour standard. On our course, they don't work on them at all. A bit of a rake every now and then is about it. If a pro comp was to be held there, they would all be marked as GUR.

The Pro's don't play on courses with any similarity to ours.
 
Interesting post.

I think in the really old days you had to tee up within a club's length of the last hole. Would have made those greens really tricky.

Whilst I like a golf course to look and feel as "natural" as possible and can see the attraction of having greens that are a bit less manicured, putting on a perfect green is one of the best feelings in golf. True, a bobbly woolly green might be harder to putt on but a smooth fast green means all the subtle borrows and undulations come into play.

So for me smooth and fast rather than slow and bumpy.
 
I prefer hard, fast greens to play onto and putt on.

I do think our expectations are inflated by watching golf on tv, the courses the pros play on are prepared specially for that one week to be 'showcased' on tv.

There are usually a lot of complaints when necessary work is carried out such as slitting and tining. But it all needs to be done to allow the course to be in as good condition as possible during the summer months.

Also, a lot of clubs have a tight budget to work with. Thus limiting the amount of fertilizer, dressing,etc that can be used and also the machinery available for the club to utilize in maintaining the quality of the course.



How many greenstaff does each club employ?

Courses that can afford 2 or 3 staff are going to be working extra hard to get comparable results to a course that employs 8-12 staff.
 
I think its a funny question that is probably going to get the same answer from everyone , hard fast true greens.

However when playing with a lot of people on this type of green their putting goes to pot and theyre rubbish.
The first couple of holes they race them by and look exasperated and miss the 6 footer back. Then they get tentative and leave a couple 6 feet short and all of sudden theyre a complete mess on the greens.

Now give them a nice slower running green (bobbly or not) and they can be positive from the start and seem much more comfortable with this pace and consequently putt better.

I know its a generalisation but imo this happens more often than not with cat2 and above amateur golfers. We all like to think we're gonna be great putters on lovely true,fast greens but i'm afraid the reality is a little different than the dream world most players seem to live in

Read the post from the Beau Desert meeting and you'll see everyone having many 3 putts and even 4 but they all said they loved the greens , go figure :D
 
The greens @ Beau were very very good although I wouldn't say that they were either firm or fast. Any well struck approach shot would hold and leave a healthy pitch mark. Pace was "nice", no more than around 10 on the stimp I would have thought. Putting from the wrong side of the hole was quick but then again some of the slopes were pretty major.

My pair of 3 whacks on the day were down to putting across the slopes on a couple of greens and being in the wrong place from my approach. All in all I'd hold Beau as my version of a perfect conditioned green.
 
I have played alot abroad, mainly Florida, with firm fast greens. I know from experience that this is what I like. The greens is Buenos Aires particularly were unbelievably quick.

A lot of guys who watch telly golf think that all american greens are target golf though, where the ball just hits the green and stops. Any one watching the golf last night from Disney Magnolia and Disney Palm will have seen this is not the case. The ball was bouncing on impact, and rolling out. There were quite a few chip and runs from off the greens too.

The issue for most with fast greens is that they never get to practice on them. Guys at Beau were struggling with the greens speed, but that is because they weren't used to it. Just because you are used to crap greens doesn't mean you like putting on them.

At my course, the greens are truly fast for two comps a year. The open, and the scratch gold. For most others they are ok, and then during the week they are slow. They only ever get hand cut for the two comps mentioned.
As a result when they are fast, most of the members struggle, and then say they don't like fast greens. This is not a good reason for keeping them slow.
 
The greens @ Beau were very very good although I wouldn't say that they were either firm or fast. Any well struck approach shot would hold and leave a healthy pitch mark. Pace was "nice", no more than around 10 on the stimp I would have thought. Putting from the wrong side of the hole was quick but then again some of the slopes were pretty major.

My pair of 3 whacks on the day were down to putting across the slopes on a couple of greens and being in the wrong place from my approach. All in all I'd hold Beau as my version of a perfect conditioned green.
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I'd go along with that.

The greens were beautifully smooth and even paced. But if in the wrong place on the green you were in trouble as there were some immense slopes.

It was the perfect example of needing to know the course. So you know to play to safe areas of the green rather than attacking flags.
 
Some of the nicest greens I've played on are at Bearwood Lakes. Normally running quite quick. Lovely surface, smooth roll etc. and take a shot.
I have played in the Libby's Challenge charity day there for the past two years and the Trilby Tour event in August of this year. This year they were fairly "nippy" both times but the year before they were lightning!
You only had to touch the ball and it was "whoo whoo" down the slope and you could easily put the ball 4 or 5 feet past the hole without really putting that badly.
Making a four footer there is more satisfying than anywhere else I've played.
 
I think its a funny question that is probably going to get the same answer from everyone , hard fast true greens.

However when playing with a lot of people on this type of green their putting goes to pot and theyre rubbish.
The first couple of holes they race them by and look exasperated and miss the 6 footer back. Then they get tentative and leave a couple 6 feet short and all of sudden theyre a complete mess on the greens.

Now give them a nice slower running green (bobbly or not) and they can be positive from the start and seem much more comfortable with this pace and consequently putt better.

I know its a generalisation but imo this happens more often than not with cat2 and above amateur golfers. We all like to think we're gonna be great putters on lovely true,fast greens but i'm afraid the reality is a little different than the dream world most players seem to live in

Read the post from the Beau Desert meeting and you'll see everyone having many 3 putts and even 4 but they all said they loved the greens , go figure :D
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That's me 100% except the part about thinking I'll be great on great greens.

I was shocking at Beau, and I knew I would be, because of what I'm used to.

Soft, slow and true for me please rather than the soft, slow, and bobbly that I play on now.
 
To answer the question, no, I don't think brilliant greens are a prerequisite for a good game of golf. Just look at some of the Shell's Wonderful World of Golf video's from the 60's. Some great courses with what could be described at best as mediocre greens. I think people get far too hung up on greens, particularly speed and I've played too many courses where the greens are too fast for the slopes which just make putting a mockery. I'm not advocating a return to slow bobbly greens but saying just chill out about them when maybe they aren't perfect...... we all miss more 6 footers than we hole anyway.
 
I think people get far too hung up on greens, particularly speed and I've played too many courses where the greens are too fast for the slopes which just make putting a mockery.
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You've just hit the nail well and truly on the head , excellent comment
 
I think people get far too hung up on greens, particularly speed and I've played too many courses where the greens are too fast for the slopes which just make putting a mockery.
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You've just hit the nail well and truly on the head , excellent comment
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Intersting comment and definitely a lot in this. I'm thinking of some recent US Opens, played on old courses where the greens were contoured with a much slower playing surface in mind that than which is now standard, with the result that some pin positions became virtually unplayable.
 
That is the reason our greenkeeper cannot make our greens faster than he does for our big comps.

The slopes on our 1st and 4th and 17th greens would have people putting off the green all day.


Bit like Shinnecock Hills when The Goose won, except we don't have a spare fireman with a hose to water them between groups!! :D
 
A few years back our captain that year (a single figure man) wanted the course set up at its hardest for the club champs and decided to order the greens to be rolled and made as fast as they possibly could. Not only did it make a mockery of it for the majority of the field who'd gone from comfortably quick to F1 speed overnight, but the greens became damaged and infected and took at least 18 months to recover. At least now in the Summer they are true even if they aren't the quickest around. Personally I'd rather have a 4-6 footer that I know will keep its line so I can judge the putt based on pace than having to worry about missing an old rut or hitting the right bobble. That isn't skill but lottery putting.

Bearwood have excellent greens (as you'd expect from a course of its standing) but give them their due, Sand Martins hosted several events this year and their greens really were quick. It was quite easy to look a real idiot trying to hole 3 footers by the patio as event he assistant pros proved.
 
The speed on our greens is limited because of the severe slope on the 18th. They are rolled before big comps though, and supposedly get up to 11 on the stimp, which is fast enough for my shakey hands.

Must admit when i play on slow greens my putting is even worse.
 
Must admit when i play on slow greens my putting is even worse.
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Tell me about it :eek:

Played at Ashdown Forest West course on Wednesday. The greens were as fast as our fringes, and looked like them. Nightmare.

Just to put that into perspective, Sundridge Park hosts the Waterford Trophy amateur competition which is a WAGR competition and has a limit of 2 h/cap, so there are many + h/cap players taking part - 2 rounds on the East course on one day followed by 2 rounds on the West the next day.

Some days before the comp started, we had a visit from the powers that be to do a final check on the courses and they asked for the greens to be slowed up a bit :D

They ended up not an aweful lot faster than the members have to put up with week in/week out during the summer (about 10-11). I hate slow greens :mad: :mad:

Just for those who don't know Sundridge Park, the East and West are currently about 6,500 and 6,000 respectively.

Out of 172 "person rounds" over the 2 days, there were only 18 sub par rounds and the winning score was 1 over par.
 
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