Do You Prefer Faster Or Slower Greens?

[dagolfer18]

Do y’all prefer faster greens or slower greens? If you’re in between, just say which one you’re closer to. For me, I prefer the greens fast, but definitely not US Open fast. Our club keeps the greens at about an 8.5 or 9 on the stimpmeter. For the club championship every summer, they bump it up to about a 10. 

[DaveP043]

I like smooth true greens.  In my experience, faster greens seem to also be smoother.  But I do agree, greens can become too fast to play appropriately.  I draw the line at the speed where an uphill putt will get within a foot of the hole (where it should be semi-level), and roll back to where it started.  That's either a hole location, or greens too fast for the slopes.

[Bucki1968]

Faster...defiantly. Our club is usually around a 10 but they can get them rolling faster for events. 

[mcanadiens]

A true roll is the more important thing, but the tendency is for better-conditioned courses to also have faster greens. 

Honestly, if the greens roll true, I'd rather have the slower ones. The home courses have some of the slowest greens in these parts. Of course, they don't roll particularly true either with the amount of abuse they take. The handful of times I go somewhere with legitimately fast greens, I'm a duck out of water.

 

[klineka]

29 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

I like smooth true greens.  In my experience, faster greens seem to also be smoother.  

Same here. I typically putt my best on fast greens.

[saevel25]

Faster for the following, 

1. They tend to be less bump and roll true
2. You required less of a putting stroke. 

[David in FL]

Fast.

[IowaGreg]

Do y’all prefer faster greens or slower greens?

Fast

[pganapathy]

Hands down I prefer slower greens.  I am not a great putter and my logic is this.  If I overhit a putt, it will go way past on a faster green.  I really don't want to be putting 5 feet after missing my first putt 😱

[klineka]

6 minutes ago, pganapathy said:

Hands down I prefer slower greens.  I am not a great putter and my logic is this.  If I overhit a putt, it will go way past on a faster green.  I really don't want to be putting 5 feet after missing my first putt 😱

That's not necessarily true though. I can make a putt go 5 foot past the hole on a fast green or a slow green.

On a fast green you don't have to hit the ball as hard to get it to go the same distance as you would on the slower green, so on the faster green a smaller putting stroke is required which should result in more control.

[pganapathy]

37 minutes ago, klineka said:

That's not necessarily true though. I can make a putt go 5 foot past the hole on a fast green or a slow green.

On a fast green you don't have to hit the ball as hard to get it to go the same distance as you would on the slower green, so on the faster green a smaller putting stroke is required which should result in more control.

Not for me.  It is very easy to overdo a shot for me.  All it requires is a touch too much power or inaccuracy and I am a couple of feet away from the pin for my second.  Three putts add more to my double or triple bogeys than anything else 🥶

[Groucho Valentine]

Generally, i prefer fast greens to putt on. You can make smoother more rhythmic strokes on fast greens and don't have to worry as much about getting the ball to the hole.  But fast greens are usually harder and more difficult to stop the ball where you want on approach shots and pitches, so theres a trade off in terms of total play. 

[NJpatbee]

Faster - within reason.

[Darkfrog]

I definitely prefer fast. I think, at least on the courses that I play, faster greens correlate to higher quality/more well cared for greens, which means less bumps and oddities to bump the ball off line.

Also I have a gross habit of leaving putts 5-6 fee short and it's harder for me to do this on fast greens.

[DaveP043]

A little off topic, and I apologize, but how often do you see someone whistle a putt way past the hole, and say "Gee, this green is a lot faster than the rest", when you're thinking "Wow, you hammered that one".

[RayG]

Trueness is more important than speed. And consistency among all the holes is right there as well. But on the whole- faster is my preference. to a point

[DennisMiller]

Faster, as long as they are fair. I played a course in California where the greens were very fast and the greens had a lot of slopes. Conditions were unfair.

[iacas]

@dagolfer18, please add polls for stuff like this.

I added one and voted for "faster."

Golfers putt better on faster greens. In large part because, as others have noted, they're smoother.