Is the Pursuit of Faster Greens a Problem in Golf?

[jgreen85]

Assumptions I have here are this: faster greens = more challenging to hold greens for approach shots! faster greens = less room for error on chips/pitches. Fast greens =less room for error on longer putts. If those assumptions hold, slower greens would make the game easier. I don't think saying people putt better on fast greens is sufficient to saying 7-9 is better than 4-6. If people can hold greens more easily, can be more aggressive with pitches/chips, and lag putts, that's better than 6 footers holding their lines better.

[Pretzel]

Fast greens =less room for error on longer putts.

My $.02 here is that I actually find fast greens to be easier to putt on for long lag putts. The reason for this is on the "shag carpet" kind of greens that are slow, I almost always leave it short just because it hits a bump or just because it's plain slow. At least on a fast green I can see the break that my next putt will have if it goes five feet past the hole instead of five feet short of it on a slow green.

[saevel25]

Assumptions I have here are this: faster greens = more challenging to hold greens for approach shots!

Can be, depends if greens are firm or not. Fast greens doesn't mean firm greens

faster greens = less room for error on chips/pitches.

Not really, distance control is distance control. Given, if you are short sided above the hole, then yes fast greens are troublesome. If you are not then its not much of an issue. Even so, short sided and chipping down hill on any green is not ideal, so don't hit your shot there.

Fast greens =less room for error on longer putts.

Again, distance control is distance control. If you have it, its a non-issue. Amateurs who suck at putting can putt horrible on slow greens and fast greens, the reason being they suck at putting.

[Fourputt]

My club consistently is know for some of the fastest best maintained greens in Arizona.  Nearly all of my practice putting comes on these greens, and they run an easy 10-11 every day.  During tournaments and other times as the greens firm up a bit they can ocassionally run 12 or 13, and I have been out rarely when they seemed to run an 8 or 9.  For me this is why I dont see it as a problem to have faster greens:  I played a course called longbow on monday, walked on as a single.  The buzz was that there was a big tournament over the weekend and rumor had it the greens were running a 13 hard as rock.  Two putts on the practice green I felt right at home, had one of my best putting days shot a low score.  The thresome I played with from out of state struggled like crazy.  Every putt was a comment about how fast the greens were and mentally they never got into a groove.  As it has been pointed out it is IMHO far easier to score well on fast greens, but also putting on slower greens when you are used to fast is also much easier, as you feel much more agressive in your lines and speeds.

You contradict yourself.  You say you don't see any problem with fast greens, then you immediately refute that statement by talking about how the other 3 players couldn't handle the speed.   Clearly the speed of those greens was a problem for ¾ of your group.

[MattM]

I voted yes for one very simple reason......Around here when we have fast greens (I think of fast as anything above a 10) the superintendents are too stupid to make them fast but not hard!

Here if the greens are fast EVERY one of them is hard.  I hit a 6 iron out of the rough the other day that hit the front of the green at highlands and bounced WAY up in the air and landed 30 feet of the back.  I think maybe it hit a rock.  Get up to the green and see my divot which is a tad concave but not like it should be with a six iron from 180 out!

In golf if you have an amateur playing and they hit their shot and feel great about it, and it looks great in the air etc... there is nothing more disheartening then having it hit the green where they meant to only to have it fly miles off the back!  That's terrible!

A couple of times I've bitched courses out because they know they do it, and they are honest about it and apologize, but they never change it.  You can have a fast green that is still fair with approach shots.  If it's not then what really is the point.  Isn't it kind of stupid to shoot for a spot beside the green when you know you can hit it but are afraid of how the green will react?  Obviously, that was not the way the game was meant to be played either....It is VERY frustrating.

To that as well...  I normally hit 7 GIRs a round, but since last year with courses trying to speed up their greens I've actually hit 4-5 MORE greens a round only to have them go off the back....

Before anything says anything I do realize that it's like that in the pros, BUT we aren't pros and if golf wants people to come out and play they should actually FORCE courses to setup their greens to a standard.  That would fix most of the problems.  It would also get more people involved because it's not the putting speed that's the problem is the firmness!  Especially for women.  A girl who starts out playing is going to be hitting hybrids into the green.  In these conditions it's impossible to hold them!  Most girls I know that have tried to play are not nearly as competitive as I know I am or other guys I play with, so if a girl thinks it's hard (mind you not every girl) they are going to go try some other recreational game..

[wils5150]

I voted yes for one very simple reason......Around here when we have fast greens (I think of fast as anything above a 10) the superintendents are too stupid to make them fast but not hard!

Here if the greens are fast EVERY one of them is hard.  I hit a 6 iron out of the rough the other day that hit the front of the green at highlands and bounced WAY up in the air and landed 30 feet of the back.  I think maybe it hit a rock.  Get up to the green and see my divot which is a tad concave but not like it should be with a six iron from 180 out!

In golf if you have an amateur playing and they hit their shot and feel great about it, and it looks great in the air etc... there is nothing more disheartening then having it hit the green where they meant to only to have it fly miles off the back!  That's terrible!

A couple of times I've bitched courses out because they know they do it, and they are honest about it and apologize, but they never change it.  You can have a fast green that is still fair with approach shots.  If it's not then what really is the point.  Isn't it kind of stupid to shoot for a spot beside the green when you know you can hit it but are afraid of how the green will react?  Obviously, that was not the way the game was meant to be played either....It is VERY frustrating.

To that as well...  I normally hit 7 GIRs a round, but since last year with courses trying to speed up their greens I've actually hit 4-5 MORE greens a round only to have them go off the back....

Before anything says anything I do realize that it's like that in the pros, BUT we aren't pros and if golf wants people to come out and play they should actually FORCE courses to setup their greens to a standard.  That would fix most of the problems.  It would also get more people involved because it's not the putting speed that's the problem is the firmness!  Especially for women.  A girl who starts out playing is going to be hitting hybrids into the green.  In these conditions it's impossible to hold them!  Most girls I know that have tried to play are not nearly as competitive as I know I am or other guys I play with, so if a girl thinks it's hard (mind you not every girl) they are going to go try some other recreational game..

become a superintendent since you think you know so much

[Lihu]

Faster is better for putting, and I would think better for GIR since the fringes would probably be just as tight. If the greens are cement hard, then don't try to land on them. Seems logical to hit the fringe and let it roll on.

[Fourputt]

Faster is better for putting, and I would think better for GIR since the fringes would probably be just as tight.

If the greens are cement hard, then don't try to land on them. Seems logical to hit the fringe and let it roll on.

You can hit a 3 foot wide fringe on demand?  You must be really good.

[Lihu]

You can hit a 3 foot wide fringe on demand?  You must be really good. :smartass:

Sure, if I'm targeting the center of the green and miss short. :-P

[jgreen85]

Can be, depends if greens are firm or not. Fast greens doesn't mean firm greens Not really, distance control is distance control. Given, if you are short sided above the hole, then yes fast greens are troublesome. If you are not then its not much of an issue. Even so, short sided and chipping down hill on any green is not ideal, so don't hit your shot there.  Again, distance control is distance control. If you have it, its a non-issue. Amateurs who suck at putting can putt horrible on slow greens and fast greens, the reason being they suck at putting.

So your solution is to be better at golf. Got it.

[MS256]

LOL. ;-) If you had surveyed our group coming off of #10 Saturday (after all of us missing above the hole because there's water on the other side) about whether we liked fast greens or not you would have gotten a resounding Hell no. Normally I do but it just depends on how fast is fast and how much slope I'm dealing with. ;-) Fast yes. FAST no.

[Pretzel]

Here if the greens are fast EVERY one of them is hard.  I hit a 6 iron out of the rough the other day that hit the front of the green at highlands and bounced WAY up in the air and landed 30 feet of the back.  I think maybe it hit a rock.  Get up to the green and see my divot which is a tad concave but not like it should be with a six iron from 180 out!

I'm just going to stop you at this point and tell you that the problem is not likely to be the greens in that case. The reason it ended up 30 feet behind the green is likely because you hit a low-spinning shot out of a "flyer" lie where the ball was slightly propped up in the rough. This happens when the rough gets between the face and the ball, but it isn't a significant enough amount of rough to slow the club down by a large margin. This gives you a shot with your normal ball speed and a slightly higher launch angle (it has to be propped up slightly in the rough) that will bounce like crazy since it has very little spin on it.

That being said, the solution for playing on firm greens has already been given. Just plan to land the ball a little short, maybe with a lower trajectory shot, or try to loft the ball way up in the air if you're feeling creative. Think of it more like you're playing links-style golf where it doesn't matter if the ball lands on the fairway or green, so long as it ends up near the hole. I know I always aim for the front fringe if greens are especially fast and firm at a course I'm playing. At the very least, if the ball ends up getting caught in the fringe, I have a shorter chip than if the ball bounced and went over.

As a small aside, Yardley Pennsylvania (where Highland Golf Course is located) had lows near freezing temperature (high 30's to low 40's) from the 22nd of April to the end of April. If you played during that period of time when your story occurred, the reason the greens were so firm is twofold. You first have the fact that the ground tends to get harder when their cold, and that could be added to what were already fairly firm conditions at the course due to rolling the greens in the morning.

[MattM]

Do you have courses that have raised greens?  If you do then you will know why your suggestion makes absolutely NO SENSE!  NONE!!!!  The majority of courses around here are raised greens, and at dauphin right in front of the green is actually WET!   I guess you would play the shot PERFECTLY 20 yards in front of the green skip it off of mud then wind up a foot off of the hole right?

And BTW DAUPHIN HIGHLANDS is not in YARDLEY PA man.... Do you use blades by chance?  I do and I can tell you for a fact that I do get spin on the ball out of rough because I take a very steep swing for that reason.  I never try to pick it out of rough. The funny part about what you are saying is that I WAS PLAYING THE FRONT!  The hole was 205 yards away and I played a 180 yard 6 iron.  Apparently, you all are in a stratosphere all your own because when I hit the fringe in front of the green the ball rolls off the back at a faster pace than if I just hit the green with it....

Some of the suggestions in here just don't make sense!  Not only that but you guys act like you are the purist of pure and if you can play those conditions everyone can.  Let me point something out here....  Golf is dying!  It's because of stuff like this!  When you try to make a course play like a us open you completely take out any new customers and hurt the game in the process!  The point should be to make it both fun AND challenging.  It's not fun when its impossible, and for new players they are impossible....

Again, I'm not saying speed of greens is the issue.  I'm saying that superintendents that do not know what they are doing (I've seen many) cause their greens to get very very hard in an effort to make them stimp faster.  If you want to grow the game you can't have the attitude that because you can play it fine everyone should.  If you have that attitude then more people will quit playing or not play at all and all of the golf courses will close down.  That's not what anyone wants!

[Lihu]

Do you have courses that have raised greens?  If you do then you will know why your suggestion makes absolutely NO SENSE!  NONE!!!!  The majority of courses around here are raised greens, and at dauphin right in front of the green is actually WET!   I guess you would play the shot PERFECTLY 20 yards in front of the green skip it off of mud then wind up a foot off of the hole right?

And BTW DAUPHIN HIGHLANDS is not in YARDLEY PA man.... Do you use blades by chance?  I do and I can tell you for a fact that I do get spin on the ball out of rough because I take a very steep swing for that reason.  I never try to pick it out of rough. The funny part about what you are saying is that I WAS PLAYING THE FRONT!  The hole was 205 yards away and I played a 180 yard 6 iron.  Apparently, you all are in a stratosphere all your own because when I hit the fringe in front of the green the ball rolls off the back at a faster pace than if I just hit the green with it....

Some of the suggestions in here just don't make sense!  Not only that but you guys act like you are the purist of pure and if you can play those conditions everyone can.  Let me point something out here....  Golf is dying!  It's because of stuff like this!  When you try to make a course play like a us open you completely take out any new customers and hurt the game in the process!  The point should be to make it both fun AND challenging.  It's not fun when its impossible, and for new players they are impossible....

Again, I'm not saying speed of greens is the issue.  I'm saying that superintendents that do not know what they are doing (I've seen many) cause their greens to get very very hard in an effort to make them stimp faster.  If you want to grow the game you can't have the attitude that because you can play it fine everyone should.  If you have that attitude then more people will quit playing or not play at all and all of the golf courses will close down.  That's not what anyone wants!

One of my practice courses "Brookside course 2" has a lot of raised "island" greens. I always layup to the fringe. I take my club and choke up half an inch to lose some yardage. The greens aren't super fast there (probably 9 Stimp), but this tactic seemed to work at Coyote Hills Golf Club (10-11 Stimp).

[MattM]

So, you purposely play all approach shots well in front of the green and don't want them on the green to putt them? Why?

[Lihu]

So, you purposely play all approach shots well in front of the green and don't want them on the green to putt them? Why?

Not all of them, just the ones that might be a problem with sticking.

BTW, I am not all that accurate, so this is only my tactic. It doesn't always work out that way.

[MS256]

Not saying you are wrong because I have no idea what they do where you live but I don't know any superintendant that intentionally makes the greens firmer to get them to stimp higher. He would more than likely lose his greens (and his job) if he played that game very much. Most of the greens around here are Bent grass and they are usually very moist trying to keep them alive. Plugged balls on the greens are more the norm than the exception around here. Some of the Bermuda grass greens can be more firm but they are usually a little slower anyway.

[MattM]

Two greens at Dauphin Highlands were lost last year.  Fairview regularly kills their grass as does valley green and rich valley.  Armitage regularly deals with dead grass on their greens as does Range End.  Sportsmans and Sunset are pathetic.  Mayapple is nice, and before they got rid of it Hershey Links was a great course with nice greens.  I could go on about more courses around here but you get the point.

I started playing about 6 months before most of our courses purposely started trying to make their greens faster.  It was weird!  They would make divots etc. and the ball would stop and then it was just horrible.  You hit a green around here for the most part you have to expect it to roll to the back.  If you come up short in the fringe it actually speed up the ball and it goes further off the back.

A lot of times they just refuse to water the greens....