Ouch...

Yeah... this pin position was a little rough today at my home course.  It took me five putts from 15 feet to close out the hole.

Putt #1 was from 15 feet and a little right of where the video was shot.  The ball died on the low side about 3 inches left of the hole and proceeded to roll down the slope to 9 feet.

Putt #2 was from 9 feet and died exactly where I showed it in the video... approximately 1 inch off the left side of the cup.  It paused briefly and then rolled right back to my feet.

Putt #3 was also from 9 feet.  I gave it a little more power but pushed it a touch.  It rolled over the right edge of the cup and ran about 2 feet past the hole where it turned around and rolled right back to my feet again.

Putt #4 touched the front lip of the hole, stopped and rolled back.  I begged it to stop... which it did about 3 feet from the cup.  I quickly got up to the ball and tapped it in.

Finished with a quadruple bogey 8 on one of the easier holes on the course.

CY

Yea, that's absurd, i hate that. Here's what you do

Spam his mailbox with this

http://www.gcga.org/documents/speeds_slopes_locations.pdf

Just print it out, send him a copy a day for like a month

Saevel that is an awesome link and I'm printing a couple copies and stuffing them into the golf bag at lunch...  something to post on the door of the pro shop if the greenskeeper gets bullish with his pin drops again.

My home course does this exact same thing on one hole and It is stupid/frustrating.  They place the pin on a false front, the ball will only stop if it comes to rest about 1 inch from the hole on the right side.  I had a 15 foot putt for bird coming down the hill into the false front.  I just tapped the ball and it rolled off the front of the green and down into the fairway.  From green to fairway on a putt can make a golfer crazy.

I played a course that has a horseshoe type break in one of the greens.   It's a short(er) par-5, so they use to like to cut the hole directly in the middle of the horseshoe of the green.   To keep the ball from coming back down to you, you either have to make it (obviously)  or put 10 feet past the hole, and the break is big enough that even if you hit the center of the hole when putting from above the hole, it's probably going to be going so fast it won't drop.

If you leave it short, it's coming back 12' or so to you, so that particular hole requires you to run in an uphill, 12+ foot putt.   If the hole isn't cut on the break, it can be quite forgiving on your approach though.

If you're left or right of the hole, I don't even know how it's possible to run that putt in.

I said they "Use to like to cut the hole there" because I know the assistant pro at the course, and his brother is a good friend of mine,  and they told me,  while we were playing it once,  that someone took a club or something, and hacked a crude hole somewhere on the green, stabbed the pin into the ground, and made their  "own hole"    Wanton vandalism is never the answer, but since then, the course no longer puts the hole directly on the ridge.   I was told it was put there intentionally to frustrate the golfers though.   Watch out for your greenskeepers who are having a bad day I guess.

I laughed... but only because the guy I played with yesterday was seriously close to doing the same.

You're right in saying that vandalism isn't the answer... but it's certainly frustrating.

I walked off the green shaking my head, but mostly I was mad at myself for having a second consecutive 'explosion' hole.

CY

yep i had a few instances of this.

One is hole number 3, Tam O'shantern, Canton, ohio. One summer it got so dry and fast that there was only one part of the green usable, the top shelf. The rest of the green the ball wouldn't stop, it would roll off the green. I remember some people quiting the Ohio Open that year, just walked off the course.

Another would near canton, Chippewa golf course. Holes number 16 and 15. 15 is a three tier green, if you putt down one tier, it will not stop till the ball is off the green. Hole 16, the ball would roll up and then roll back down 10 feet, it was absurd.

Been there...

http://thesandtrap.com/t/68380/funhouse-greens

The short, nine-hole courses I play on occasion do this a lot. There's always a couple of cups in crazy spots under the guise of "defending par." Often, everyone in the foursome three-putts from 10 feet. That's defending par?

I've played both of those courses  (league play at Tam O' )  and I don't recall any crazy greens,  but it's been awhile......       I use to get out to Firestone all the time on Corporate Memberships  (by playing with people WAY above my pay-grade!)  and that's a completely different kind of frustrating!

Tammy's green was just one of them. It was when it got dry and fast. The green sits on a high point, and that year it was unfair. 2/3rd of the green was unplayable. But that was just one summer.

The other course, they just had the greens to fast that day. It happens, but i played bad, and by those two holes i was pissed off completely.