Green speed question

[MiniMoe]

I can only wish for fast greens. Our course did not overseed this year and I was hoping the greens would be lightning fast. Alas I am totally disappointed. They have watered so much we have to play lift clean and place even though we have not had any rain in 6 months. On top of that, the greens don't get mowed but once a week if we are lucky. Right now they might be rolling at a 4 on a downhill putt. It is ruining my putting stroke and it makes me not want to play. On the bright side... I think we have all bitched enough the pro is going make some changes. Maybe by this time next week they will roll a 5.

[tjy355]

...

You said it best in your last paragraph. A discussion of "favorite green speed" is meaningless without taking into consideration the green slopes and contours.

[JonnyGolf]

I play down at the air force academy, and those greens are pretty fast, Which i like, its just getting used to it really.. plus just before the big open at Murphy creek, the greens were rolling pretty fast, They rolled em a bit, dont remember exactly, but i know one of the greens was way faster than the other, that one was probobly close to 14, where as the rest were in the 13 range if i remember correctly.

really unlikely to be 13 or 14. those are really hard and fast greens. Unless you hit the ball super high, you wouldn't be able to stop anything more than a 9i.

[JonnyGolf]

Fast is fine, but I look for consistency in speeds, which unfortunately can be hard to find sometimes.

Agree here. At my home club, they sequentially rebuilt the greens and used bent grass instead of poa. But, the poa always comes back. So, by the time they finished, the first greens were already slowing down with the poa coming back in, while the newest greens were much faster with the bent.

Long story short, very inconsistent green speeds from green to green. It would drive people playing them crazy.

[mirv]

i played a course this past weekend that had greens that were lightning fast, and i have to say, i didn't care for it one bit. that's not to say i like slow greens, but super fast is not my cup of tea. example - i hit an approach shot approximately 6 feet past the hole on a gently sloping green. i line up, hit a pretty gentle putt, the ball lips the right side of the cup... starts picking up speed... picks up even more speed... and finally rolls just off the green about 25 away from where the ball was originally sitting. the idea was to hit the ball hard enough that it'd roll about 3 1/2 to 4 feet and then let the slope carry it the last 20-30 inches, and i feel that is exactly what i did, but it was like putting on glass and i went from a 6 foot birdie putt to a 20 foot par putt. i proclaimed, rather loudly, that "this is bullshit" to whoever might've been listening and proceeded to wind up with a bogey (the uphill putt coming back stopped about 6 inches short of the cup). not gonna be playing there again anytime soon. any other course in this area, i average 29-32 putts per round, and i had something like 47 yesterday. it was absurd. it's been YEARS since i had a round where 3/4 of my scorecard denotes 3-putts on the greens. i had one 1-putt all day, and only two or three 2-putts.