What Are The Green Speeds at Your Home Club?

[dagolfer18]

What are the normal/tournament green speeds for your home courses? For mine, we keep the greens at between 8 and 9 on the stimp for regular play, and to about a 10 for club championships.

Edited December 16, 2019 by iacas
Added Poll

[HJJ003]

I don’t really know what the stimp reads, and it’s probably a horrible guess but I would say somewhere around 10. A few courses I play in the area probably reach 12, but not many. 

[phillyk]

We keep our regular play speeds between 10 & 11. We’ve run our tournaments up to 12.5. Can’t do much more than that due to the slope of them.

[DaveP043]

Our green speeds aren't published, but I'd guess they're on the order of 8 or 9 most times, maybe up to 10 for special events.  We have a number of tiered greens, some other sloping sections, if the greens were much faster than that and they'd be nearly unplayable.  In my recent visit to Pinehurst, the greens were definitely faster,  I'd guess most of the greens were 10 to 11.

[NJpatbee]

I do not know exactly but I would take a guess at 8-9.

[David in FL]

Day to day play at my club is targeted at 10.  Special events can bump it up to 12.  

[RayG]

My guess will be that people who are good putters will underestimate the speed, and the bad putters will over estimate. Courses that see a lot of play like the ones I play in no way can keep speeds that are too high. Too much stress and they'd be dead by the end of June. There might be variations based on location and strain of grass, but a daily fee muni can't really keep it's greens at 11 or 12. 

My criteria is smoooooothness. Fast is fine and slow is fine as long as the line is true. Usually figure it out pretty quick. But a bumpy green is worse than any problems that speed cause.

[DeadMan]

I think normally they'd be around a 7 or 8, and they'll get them up to 10 or 11 for certain tournaments. My course had the reputation for the slowest greens in town, but that's not really been true recently. They've certainly amped up the speeds at times last year. The speeds at the club championship were the fastest I've seen on these greens, and they were fast by anybody's standards. 

[Missouri Swede]

I asked out of curiosity a couple of seasons ago, and we went out to the practice green.  Measured 7.5.

[phillyk]

3 hours ago, RayG said:

My guess will be that people who are good putters will underestimate the speed, and the bad putters will over estimate. Courses that see a lot of play like the ones I play in no way can keep speeds that are too high. Too much stress and they'd be dead by the end of June. There might be variations based on location and strain of grass, but a daily fee muni can't really keep it's greens at 11 or 12. 

Depends on the type of grass. Some can handle compression and length better than others.

[Double Mocha Man]

How often do you see your greens superintendent using a stimpmeter?

[bkuehn1952]

I have no idea what the "stimp" is at any of the courses I regularly play; none publish or post the green speeds.  I have never seen anyone using a stimp meter in my 50+  years of playing.  Of course, I have never been a member of a private club and rarely play private courses so my situation is missing a significant segment of the golf world.

[IowaGreg]

20 minutes ago, bkuehn1952 said:

I have no idea what the "stimp" is at any of the courses I regularly play; none publish or post the green speeds. 

LOL - yeah, They'd probably get a very blank look if I asked my usual local public course what the "stimp" was.....

[phillyk]

1 hour ago, Double Mocha Man said:

How often do you see your greens superintendent using a stimpmeter?

Ours has his out there almost every day.  I assume most supers are similar because they will want to make sure the greens are consistent from one to the next.  Its generally a good metric to keep track of against their normal routines/spraying habits.

[DaveP043]

1 minute ago, phillyk said:

Ours has his out there almost every day.  I assume most supers are similar because they will want to make sure the greens are consistent from one to the next.  Its generally a good metric to keep track of against their normal routines/spraying habits.

As I understand it, this was the initially intended use for the Stimpmeter, to help superintendents keep green speed consistent among all the greens on a course, and consistent from day to day.  Since then it seems to have become a bragging point for some courses.  

[David in FL]

1 hour ago, Double Mocha Man said:

How often do you see your greens superintendent using a stimpmeter?

Quite a bit...

[Double Mocha Man]

23 minutes ago, David in FL said:

Quite a bit...

I play 3-4 times a week and usually in the mornings when the greens are being mowed.  But I've never seen a stimpmeter being used on the course(s).  Though the lead greens superintendent did show me his new one on the practice green a few years ago.

[GolfLug]

8. I hear they roll it to 10 for Eastern Virginia Amateur.