The topic of green speeds is always at the forefront of the golfing public. Below is an article that includes comments from Dr. Michel Hurdzan, the architect of the US Open site Erin Hills and the architect for our red and blue nines at NCC. A long read but helpful to all.
http://www.golfdigest.com/story/in-the-race-to-faster-greens-caution-signs-abound-us-open?mbid=social_twitter
There is some measure of irony that the very device that was designed to
control green speeds has largely been responsible for making them seem a
lot closer to pool tables than putting surfaces.
The Stimpmeter, invented in the 1930s
but not made standard practice by the USGA until the 1970s, is a
yardstick-like trough that releases a ball on a green through gravity to
measure greenspeed in feet of roll. When it was initially devised by
noted Massachusetts amateur Edward V. Stimpson more than 80 years ago,
his concern was that greens, particularly at 1935 U.S. Open-venue
Oakmont, had simply become too fast. While Stimpson never measured
Oakmont back in the day, experts believe those slippery surfaces would
have likely been “stimping” at about a 5. Last year, the greens at
Oakmont on Sunday of the U.S. Open were close to triple that speed.
Now,
every level of the game—from players to superintendents and turf
scientists to golf course architects and rule makers—lies seduced by the
Stimpmeter as some measure of excellence rather than a regulating
guide. That unintended distortion seems almost a kind of battle between
progress and panic, as it gets easier and easier to make greens faster
and faster, and harder and harder to say enough is enough.
Even
the head of the USGA is urging all of golf to slow down while at the
same time talking about how important it is for the greens at the U.S.
Open to be an unrelenting challenge built on speed.
“When
you get the greens to a certain speed they almost come alive
architecturally to where if you miss a green, you may have to play a
contour,” Davis said when referring to the plan at Erin Hills, where the
greens will be set up to roll at what he called “average U.S. Open
speed, maybe even a little faster than typical U.S. Open speed.” Over
the last 20 years, U.S. Open speed has gone from speeds in the mid-10s
to the high 14s last year. To be fair, green speeds vary with the
course. They were 14 at Bethpage Black in 2009, but only 11.5 at Pebble
Beach the next year. Still, as an example, in the three U.S. Opens
played at Pinehurst No. 2, the projected speed went from 10.5-11 in 1999
to 11-11.5 in 2005 to 12.5 in 2014.
Michael Hurdzan, one of the golf course
architects for Erin Hills who also happens to have a Ph.D. in
environmental plant physiology, fashioned the greens at this year’s U.S.
Open site with large features and reasonable slopes given the current
state of agronomy and golf course maintenance practices. He likes to say
that if the speed is right, a ball just nudged from the top of a
particular slope should only roll out about 18 inches or so past the
hole location. He calls it “the finite linkage between speed and slope”
and how today’s green speeds necessitate that the slope grade get no
greater than about 2 percent, half of what they were when the Stimpmeter
was introduced in the 1970s. The greens at Erin Hills reflect the
changing times.
“Erin Hills is a
good example of greens where we have a lot of pitch in them,” he said.
“To set a hole any further up the slope would be just making a game out
of it. If you want putting to be a precision art or skill, then you have
to give them a playing field that allows them to do it.”
But Hurdzan also knows that the green speeds at marquee events like this week’s U.S. Open have become dangerously seductive.
Speed is addictive,” he said. “The old story is that today’s luxury is tomorrow’s necessity.”
When
the USGA introduced the Stimpmeter in 1978, it had just completed a
year-long test of 581 courses. It found the average green speed to be
about 6.5. Less than 2 percent of the 2,116 measurements recorded were
higher than 9. Today, at a typical
PGA Tour event, green speeds are probably two-to-three feet faster than
most of the fastest speeds recorded in that 1977 study, although data
shows they’ve held steady in the 12-foot range over the last three
years. But it’s not just at the elite level. A 2016 Metropolitan Golf
Association survey found the average green speeds in the region to be
11, or more than a foot faster than they were in 2008. It might even be
conservative to say average green speeds across the country have
increased by more that 50 percent since that 1977 study that introduced
the Stimpmeter.
Perhaps no one on
earth has studied the ways green speeds can now be maintained as much as
Thomas Nikolai. Known as the Dr. of Green Speed, Nikolai is a Ph.D. and
turfgrass academic specialist at Michigan State, and has spoken around
the world on the topic. He thinks focusing on increasing Stimpmeter
numbers has become overly important (instead of using the device as a
gauge of greens consistency). At the end of the day, he thinks as far as
average golfers are concerned, the Stimpmeter should be practically
irrelevant.
“Green speeds should have never been
used for course comparisons because speed is never inseparable from
undulation,” he said. “Every golf course should be shooting for its own
number.”
What’s most telling is how
much has changed in the 40 years since the Stimpmeter has been actively
used, says Nikolai. He says that 6.5 average from a generation ago isn’t
merely slower than the current standard, “it’s hard to make a green
that slow today and still have it look like a green.”
What’s
changed is a paradigm shift in the maintenance practices and in some
cases the grass varieties that are being used today. In many cases,
modern greens grasses aren’t meant to produce anything but fast
surfaces. According to Golf Digest architecture editor Ron Whitten,
their relatively high concentration of grass blades per square foot
means if they’re not cut very low, it “causes the tops of the blades to
spread [much like a phone book placed on its spine, so that the greens
become ‘puffy’ or ‘grainy.’
“If a
club has invested in returfing their greens and goes with a new modern
strain, they're pretty much forced to mow at a lower height and have
faster greens than even the superintendent and architect would desire,”
Whitten said.
As
well, it is common not only for elite events and top-rated clubs but
even for nine-hole courses in small towns that will never hold a state
golf event let alone a major tournament to use those motorized greens
rollers that zip across the surface like mini-high-speed Zambonis.
Nikolai’s research has shown that rolling greens actually allows greens
to gain speed even if the mowing heights aren’t lowered or if the greens
aren’t cut every day.
The larger
point is given prudent maintenance practices, it’s become easier to
groom faster putting surfaces—within reason and for a specific time
period, says Bill Maynard, president of the Golf Course Superintendents
Association of America and the director of golf course maintenance
operations at St. Albans (Mo.) Country Club.
“All
of us at facilities big and small know where that edge is,” he said.
“It’s all about water management. We get it there, and then we back it
back.
“It’s kind of like you’re
showing off a little bit. The car’s in tune, and you’ve got the girl in
the seat, and we’re going out for a drive. But then we back off because
you can’t go 100 miles an hour on the interstate. Something bad is going
to happen. Something you can’t see coming.”
Certainly
the USGA has seen bad things happen with green speeds that may have
been pushed too far. Near catastrophes in 1998 at The Olympic Club and
in 2004 at Shinnecock Hills perhaps spurred maintenance changes and even
architectural alterations, but they didn’t do much to slow greens. And,
of course, last year at Oakmont, the case of Dustin Johnson’s ball
moving on the green, at the very least, was an indirect result of
putting surfaces slippery enough for a Pittsburgh Penguins morning
skate.
Nikolai thinks speed in and
of itself isn’t the danger to turf health it may have once been.
“Firmness is going to kill a green faster than speed, because firmness
is going to rely on withholding water,” he said.
Getting
championships to slow down, whether they be at the national or club
level, seems especially hard to do, in part, because superintendents are
as proud of their skills as tour players are of theirs.
“But
I also think superintendents get it,” Maynard said. “They know where
that speed is that’s going to affect the movement of the ball, and
nobody wants that. It’s about making those greens perform their best
that week, knowing that it’s not going further than eight days. They
have that throttle in their hand and know how to use it.”
It’s
telling, and perhaps even a little troubling, that tour players grumble
when they arrive for the Open Championship, where green speeds can be
nearly a third slower than when they played the U.S. Open a month
earlier. The R&A, in part because of the effect of the wind on the
exposed greens found on seaside links, keeps its Stimpmeter goal in the
9.5-10.5 range.
“We are hopefully
past the race for pace because if our sole focus is on speed, generally
speaking we’re in trouble when it comes to turf health,” said Steve
Isaac, director of sustainability at the R&A.
But
Hurdzan is concerned the speeds have already changed golf course
architecture for the worse by causing green slopes to be softened. “Many
of us think we’ve taken away our ability to define hole locations or
target areas within greens because of this mania for fast greens,” he
said. There is also a belief that overly fast greens is another
indication of the golf ball going too far, as insanely demanding putting
surfaces is one last defense against 350-yard tee balls.
Hurdzan
wonders if a slower green might actually end up challenging the best
players even more. “Think of it this way: Does it take more skill to
take the putter back a few inches for a 30-foot putt on a fast green, or
to take it farther back on that same 30-foot putt on a slightly slower
green?”
It’s an interesting logic, but green
speed ever since the introduction of the Stimpmeter hasn’t always been
governed by logic. “It’s a little bit crazy where we are,” Hurdzan said.
“But we’ve got to be close to maxing out.”
There needs to be a more practical dividing line when it comes to championship greens, says Maynard.
“It’s
important that we continue to group the Oakmonts and the Augusta
Nationals and the major sites in one group and then separate them from
membership play,” he said. “That difference is in terms of green speeds.
You adjust your throttle to the caliber of player.
“If it’s member play, it’s down to wherever they like. If it’s 10, that’s awesome. If it’s 11, well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Nikolai
says it’s hard but doable to get greens to stimp at those tossed around
U.S. Open green speeds of 14, although he’s never gotten a test plot
higher than 13 himself. He’s even measured the stimp on a pool table
(it’s between 15 and 16), which is either ridiculous or within reach.
But be careful what you wish for.
“If
the question is, ‘Is a pool table fast?’, the answer is, ‘Well, no,
it’s a pool table,’ ” Nikolai said. “But if you’ve ever played pool on a
slightly crooked pool table, then suddenly that slope is immense. And
you can’t even see it.”
