I am still on putting topic but this time on green speed. Since I am in a topical county, it is only 2 seasons ... hot, very hot, wet and very wet.

My local courses have a green speed of 9 to 10 during hot season and 8 to 8.5 during rainy season.

What is the avg. green speed over your side ? and how you putt on speed and slow green, also taking consideration on down and up slope ?

the greens around here in PA are all over the place. the fast ones aren't more than 11 and the slowest aren't less than 8.

For fast or slow greens, i just change where i hit the ball on the face. Especially on downhill putts. Recently i played on greens that were 12 or 13. I was heel-ing a lot of putts just to take something off of them. It's very hard to get the ball rolling with a short stroke over a long distance, so i would take a little longer stroke but keep a firm grip on the putter and hit it off center. This way it doesn't get that huge charge from the sweet spot of the putter.

As far as slow greens go. it's a confidence thing for me. I have to bring myself to hit the ball. Sometimes i just can't do that because i tend to play on firmer, faster greens. there's no real trick to it, just realize that it's going to stop much faster and it may take more to get it rolling.

birdieXris wrote:

As far as slow greens go. it's a confidence thing for me. I have to bring myself to hit the ball. Sometimes i just can't do that because i tend to play on firmer, faster greens. there's no real trick to it, just realize that it's going to stop much faster and it may take more to get it rolling.

I wish it was that easy...lol.

I play horribly on slow greens. And then, when I go back to faster greens, it takes forever for me to adjust.

In tropical parts of the world there tend to be Bermuda grass variations used on the greens. Bermuda grass often exhibits what we call "grain", which affects how the ball rolls. Putting with the grain is faster than against the grain. Bermuda greens in general tend to be slower than other types of commonly used putting green grasses. However, I have played on some really quick Bermuda greens so they are not uniformly slow.

In temperate climates (like the Northern half of the USA) we typically use variations of creeping bent grass. Bent grass has little grain and can be cut so as to create really fast putting surfaces - in general faster than Bermuda. However, cutting bent grass extremely short stresses the plant. Most courses limit the time when the green speeds are double digits in order to maintain healthy grass.

In general, most of the courses in Michigan I play tend to have moderate green speeds. Since I do not own a stimpmeter, I can only guess that the speeds are in the area of 8-10.

Bryan K wrote:

birdieXris wrote: As far as slow greens go. it's a confidence thing for me. I have to bring myself to hit the ball. Sometimes i just can't do that because i tend to play on firmer, faster greens. there's no real trick to it, just realize that it's going to stop much faster and it may take more to get it rolling. I wish it was that easy...lol. I play horribly on slow greens. And then, when I go back to faster greens, it takes forever for me to adjust.

I'm told by one golf pro at a course nearby that most of the courses in this area measure out at 8-10 on the stimp meter. The particular course where he works, however, gets way above that around club championship time.

If I learned one thing this year, it's that I play MUCH better on slow greens. I just can't get the touch down for the faster greens, and I hate when I play a course that has greens so fast that you only need to LOOK at the ball to make it fly past the hole.

What is the most difficult to me are greens that have more than a few degrees of slope, that also run 11+ on the stimpmeter. That should not be fair. If you are above the hole, it is virtually impossible to stop it unless it happens to go in. And even more difficult, if you are more than a few feet left or right of the hole on a 3+ degree (back to front) sloped green, and you make a good putt, but miss the hole by a 1/4 inch, you will end up 15' south of the hole. That to me is just plain unfair. The course designer likely never meant for the greens to be made that fast, but the superintendent doesn't seem to realize it. He just knows he wants everything short and fast for the upcoming tournament or whatever.

I think many older course designs were created before greenskeepers had the options available to make greens superfast. They designed a large degree of slope as part of a green's defense, for what might otherwise be an easily approached hole. But then greens became so much faster over the years and that perfect design of the 1940s is now a stroke or two tougher, yet the par for the course and the slope rating never changed.

DougE wrote:

What is the most difficult to me are greens that have more than a few degrees of slope, that also run 11+ on the stimpmeter. That should not be fair. If you are above the hole, it is virtually impossible to stop it unless it happens to go in. And even more difficult, if you are more than a few feet left or right of the hole on a 3+ degree (back to front) sloped green, and you make a good putt, but miss the hole by a 1/4 inch, you will end up 15' south of the hole. That to me is just plain unfair. The course designer likely never meant for the greens to be made that fast, but the superintendent doesn't seem to realize it. He just knows he wants everything short and fast for the upcoming tournament or whatever. I think many older course designs were created before greenskeepers had the options available to make greens superfast. They designed a large degree of slope as part of a green's defense, for what might otherwise be an easily approached hole. But then greens became so much faster over the years and that perfect design of the 1940s is now a stroke or two tougher, yet the par for the course and the slope rating never changed.

Good explanation, and I suspect you're absolutely right.

I have the same though too. I really do not mind if the green is slope and allot of left or right breaks. Too fast green is painfully. especially, I though hit a good shot just before the pin but see it roll to the back rough of the green

DougE wrote:

What is the most difficult to me are greens that have more than a few degrees of slope, that also run 11+ on the stimpmeter. That should not be fair. If you are above the hole, it is virtually impossible to stop it unless it happens to go in. And even more difficult, if you are more than a few feet left or right of the hole on a 3+ degree (back to front) sloped green, and you make a good putt, but miss the hole by a 1/4 inch, you will end up 15' south of the hole. That to me is just plain unfair. The course designer likely never meant for the greens to be made that fast, but the superintendent doesn't seem to realize it. He just knows he wants everything short and fast for the upcoming tournament or whatever. I think many older course designs were created before greenskeepers had the options available to make greens superfast. They designed a large degree of slope as part of a green's defense, for what might otherwise be an easily approached hole. But then greens became so much faster over the years and that perfect design of the 1940s is now a stroke or two tougher, yet the par for the course and the slope rating never changed.

Man that is a great explanation because several holes where I play if you are above the hole or on the hill putting sideways you can forget it. It gets so frustrating having a ball lip out only to go 12 or more feet pass the hole. Just recently I missed a 4 footer down hill left to right and my putt coming back was 15 feet, geez. On the particular green I am talking about the hole should be either on the top shelf or the bottom that middle tier is a nightmare.

I played at Oakmont in the 70s right after I became a side saddle putter. They were running a measured 13 on the stimpe meter and members told me that they are occasionally faster. One told me he felt like he was putting on a marble staircase. Sam Snead said he put his dime down to mark his ball and the dime slid off the green.I was playing out of Calumet CC in Homewood, Illinois at the time and thought those were fast and that I was a good putter. Oakmont ate my lunch. I still love fast greens but Oakmont was a lesson in humility.

joe jones wrote:

I played at Oakmont in the 70s right after I became a side saddle putter. They were running a measured 13 on the stimpe meter and members told me that they are occasionally faster. One told me he felt like he was putting on a marble staircase. Sam Snead said he put his dime down to mark his ball and the dime slid off the green.I was playing out of Calumet CC in Homewood, Illinois at the time and thought those were fast and that I was a good putter. Oakmont ate my lunch. I still love fast greens but Oakmont was a lesson in humility.

Ya...I've learned the hard way to not say that I love fast greens. I instead say that most greens are too slow.

In general I prefer slightly faster greens over slow. The biggest problem I have at my regular course is that each green can be radically different speed than the next. One might be 6 the next a 10! It's basically a crap shoot the whole round.