slow greens or fast greens?

[RandomGolfer]

Big fan of fast greens. I feel like it is a better test of skill.

[Fourputt]

I agree on pin placement, but there is something to not hitting the ball above the hole. I played an old Donald Ross course, and the mantra for that course is, "Below the hole, below the hole, and when in doubt below the hole."

Believe me, when you are 30 feet above the hole on the wrong side of the green, it can feel like you are on a putt putt course. Awesome course, awesome greens, really really fun, but sometimes you just have to play smart about it. Sometimes if the pin is in the front, and you are in-between clubs, maybe club down and swing hard. If you get there, you are fine. If you come up short, an easy up hill chip is better than that treacherous 30 foot down hill putt.

Maybe you are good enough to be in control of that.... I never have been.  I take what I get, and play downhill putts with a great deal of caution.

[dchoye]

A downhill putt with double breaker s a bitch to putt more so on fast greens then slow ones Remember Tiger first time at the Masters? He had so much trouble on the green then when came back to lap the field in his first masters win. He credited a strategy to play the ball below the hole to deal with the fast greens Yea uphill putts on fast greens roll better i rather wouldn't be above the hole

[saevel25]

A downhill putt with double breaker s a bitch to putt more so on fast greens then slow ones

Remember Tiger first time at the Masters? He had so much trouble on the green then when came back to lap the field in his first masters win. He credited a strategy to play the ball below the hole to deal with the fast greens

Yea uphill putts on fast greens roll better i rather wouldn't be above the hole

It isn't that they roll better. Faster greens roll better. What helps is the effective cup size increases for uphill putts. For one you have a back stop if you hit it to hard, and gravity is helping slow the ball down, so the speed entering the cup will tend to be slower, which helps the ball catch the lip more if the line is off.

[wils5150]

Note, fast greens don't have to be hard greens. Though hard greens tend to be fast. I've played on soft greens that were 11+ before.

Yep, been there done that, but that is no knock on fast greens. That is just poor maintenance, which is totally different than having fast greens.

whats poor maintenance hard fast greens or soft fast greens?

[saevel25]

whats poor maintenance hard fast greens or soft fast greens?

Neither. Played in a outing this year, greens were about 10-11 on the stimp. Yet they were very soft because of the amount of rain that fell the day before. They mowed the greens right before we went out, so they were nice and fast.

Then I've played on greens that were hard before. Middle of summer, little rain, greens are hard and fast.

Neither are poor maintenance. Poor maintenance would be if the greens got burned out. Like the home course I play at. They lost 1/4th of a green because they water the greens during the hottest part of the day and it just burns it up.

Modern greens, built in with underground irrigation can handle a lot more rain, so they are more consistent. If you get old courses, that have a lot of undulation and slope, they tend to get really soft when it rains. It isn't a bad thing, just something you got to account for. Like that outing I played in. I hit my ball to the back middle, it zipped back to the middle of the green. The pin was on the back right. My playing partner hit his to about 6 feet infront of the pin on the right, but that was more sloped, his spun off the green, left him with about a 50' chip shot. The difference was a fast soft green, but one person hit their shot on a more extreme slope. On this par 3, I hit pin high, and zipped it off the green into the rough. what I should have done was club UP one, and hit softer to take the spin off. It is just adjusting to the course.

[wils5150]

Fast greens usually are firm greens if the are soft its usually because of to much water or way to much thatch, Both are not good. The only way to keep them softer is aggressive aerification.

[dchoye]

I have played on soft firm greens The greens keeper will roll the greens to firm the green making them faster I talking about really bad greens where the owner doesn't maintain the green The grass dies and gets dry and hard. That unplayable fast