{"id":251,"date":"2010-07-13T19:13:25","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T02:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertfagan.com\/?p=251"},"modified":"2015-04-14T18:10:48","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T01:10:48","slug":"perfect-green-is-not-perfect-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/golf\/251\/perfect-green-is-not-perfect-golf","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Green Is Not Perfect Golf!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Author Bob Fagan at his “Adopted Home Club” of Ballyneal where conditions are firm, fast, and fun with a bit of brown!<\/p><\/div>\n

I love the color green and all the implications that the word has for golf.\u00a0 Indeed, the term \u201cgreenkeeper\u201d originally meant \u201ckeeper of the green\u201d.\u00a0 (Notice, greenkeeper does not have an \u201cs\u201d in it.)\u00a0 The climate of the British Isles is full of rainfall and hence the color green makes perfectly good sense as to the natural conditions one discovers on their courses.<\/p>\n

Here, in America, \u201cgreen\u201d is often an artificial color made possible at considerable expense.\u00a0 How sad!\u00a0 In fact, I hate it when my ball picks up a big glob of wet mud and stops well short of my intended target even though there hasn\u2019t been any rainfall, or that I am constantly reaching for a lob wedge because the turf conditions will not permit me to play a chip shot.\u00a0 The demand for green, lush fairways and putting surfaces has really changed the game, and not for the better in my opinion.\u00a0 A little more brown is okay, even good for golf.<\/p>\n

My love for the game originated in the early 1960s in Eastern Pennsylvania at a time when golf course automatic irrigation was not very prevalent.\u00a0 What attracted me to the game was the naturalness of the game, the different styles of look and strategy depending upon the indigenous climate and terrain where it was played.\u00a0 The courses, even the prestigious ones like Pine Valley and Merion, had natural rough and brown or grayish fairways unless we had had a rainy period.\u00a0 The ground was hard and the ball ran.\u00a0 Perhaps that doesn\u2019t paint the best picture, but the fact that you had to recognize the contours of the course and play accordingly made for a fascinating challenge, even though the ball would roll further.<\/p>\n

That ground game has been lost at many courses in America.\u00a0 Late in the 60\u2019s, my club (Indian Valley Country Club in Telford, Pa.) installed an automatic irrigation system and literally overnight the course played long and lush.\u00a0 At first, I thought it was the finest development ever.\u00a0 In hindsight, I was wrong; it turned out to be a curse.\u00a0 The fairways narrowed to the reach of the new sprinklers and became as imaginatively shaped as a the Pennsylvania Turnpike.\u00a0 Many fairway bunkers were effectively taken out of play because they were surrounded by rough and offered no reward for carrying them.\u00a0 The strategy of different lines of play to a hole disappeared in favor of simply hitting the fairway and then often witnessing the ball plop only a few feet forward out of its pitch mark. The course became too long for at nearly half the membership who could no longer reach reasonable length holes in regulation.\u00a0 With the long lush grass, you encountered \u201cfliers\u201d all the time.\u00a0 The \u201cGreenies\u201d among the club leadership, however, were crowing with pride about their new really green, lush golf course and how it played so long and tough.<\/p>\n

Golf in America wasn\u2019t always played on lush green carpets unless you encountered a rainy season.\u00a0 As I alluded to, the ball was played along the ground with the contours adding so much variation and spice to strategy and shot making.\u00a0 Ever witness what some call \u201cdeception bunkers\u201d ten to twenty yards short of a green?\u00a0\u00a0 They were not actually designed to deceive as much as provide a risk-reward penalty.\u00a0 You see, by just carrying those particular bunkers in earlier times, your ball would run along the ground nicely toward the target.\u00a0 Nowadays, with soft conditions, the ball stops well short of the target with the golfer mistakenly believing the architect positioned the bunker to optically deceive.\u00a0 While that may have been the case in a few instances and now certainly describes such hazards, it was not the original intent.<\/p>\n

Where did we Americans go astray from the engaging strategy and heritage of the British ground game?\u00a0 Look no further than the Augusta National Golf Club and their year round preparation for the Masters Golf Tournament.\u00a0 While I love the Masters Tournament as entertainment, no other American course has had such an ill effect upon American golf.\u00a0 Ironically, the Mackenzie design of Augusta did, in fact, emphasize the ground game. The problem with Augusta National is that what viewers witness each spring on their television screen or at that course is not typical, even for Augusta!\u00a0 When even Augusta can\u2019t maintain those standards for ten or twelve months, why should the rest of the courses?\u00a0 It is a fairy tale.<\/p>\n

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Augusta-istis – Not even Augusta National can sustain Masters’ conditions all year. Photo courtesy of www.nittanywhiteout.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

First of all, Augusta National is a course that is restricted to very little play half the year, and entirely closed the other half when the fairways are allowed to become brown and gray.\u00a0 Add to that an essentially unlimited maintenance budget, and you have that \u201cfairy tale of a golf course\u201d.\u00a0 The Club even adds blue colored dye to make muddy brown Rae\u2019s Creek appear attractive during Masters\u2019 time.\u00a0 They have installed elaborate heating and subterranean irrigation systems to keep the turf relatively firm and extract excess moisture. Great expense is tended to the blooming azalea and dogwood to hopefully blossom just in time for television, with artificial plantings reportedly placed when Nature does not cooperate.\u00a0 Just prior to the Masters Tournament each year literally hundreds of golf course superintendents converge on the course to volunteer their services should they be needed.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Augusta National has become the ideal standard not only for upscale private courses, but the de facto measure for all American golf courses, but with no prayer of sustainability.<\/p>\n

Next most influential golfers are either glued to television or fortunate to visit the Masters Tournament.\u00a0 They return home and then naturally want their Superintendent to imitate Augusta National.\u00a0 With no similar budget, no similar climate, soil, water, or abundance of other resources, we are pushing our golf course superintendents right up the proverbial wall.\u00a0 What is right for the Sacramento, Boston, or Houston may not be an Augusta clone regardless of the financial resources.\u00a0 Yet everyone wants to copy it.\u00a0 This is an unrealistic ideal, \u201cAugusta-itis\u201d gone bad, expensively so, and it has altered the game to boot!<\/p>\n

There are some who maintain, and perhaps correctly so, that Americans judge the quality of a golf course primarily on course conditioning, and now how green it is.\u00a0 Horrors!\u00a0 Have we gone that far, from analyzing courses in terms of strategy, a superb routing, shaping and placement of course features to simply assessing how green and manicured a course is as criteria for greatness?\u00a0 If so, American consumers will be dazzled by any over-watered layout that drains reasonably and is mowed regularly.\u00a0 Even scarier is the subsequent proposition that the golfing public equates good service with a facility caring enough to make its course green and soft.\u00a0 That speaks well for the branding of Augusta National and the Masters, but poorly of today\u2019s American golf consumer.\u00a0 Regardless, that is, and I repeat, an expensive proposition.<\/p>\n

This mandate for wall-to-wall greenness and conditioning extracts a toll in higher green fees as golfers must pay a premium price as superintendents struggle with nature and reality.\u00a0 Cutting and maintaining thick fairway lawns and lush watered rough is more expensive.\u00a0 In days past, a well maintained green and tee with an acceptable fairway was good enough, with or without improving your lies.\u00a0 Rough was simply that, rough.\u00a0 If water supply is an issue, this appetite for green compounds that affordability index.\u00a0 If you have played golf in season in Las Vegas or Phoenix, you know to what I refer.<\/p>\n

Not only is golf more expensive, but also \u201cgreen and soft\u201d is a more difficult challenge for the vast majority of golfers, though a far easier one for the few expert players.\u00a0 Hard and fast conditions allow the novice to get more distance, which is not a factor for the accomplished player whose ball typically flies over the interesting terrain only to stop quickly on a soft surface.\u00a0 Many feel that this is the reason behind the decline in shot-making skills among many of today\u2019s better American players.\u00a0 They simply swing harder and with their improved equipment, their task is often akin to throwing darts and for further distances.\u00a0 Evidence the recent US Opens at Shinnecock Hills, Pinehurst #2, and Pebble Beach.\u00a0 They were far more challenging for the pros because the courses played firm and fast.\u00a0 Soft grasses and deep rough render creativity impossible.\u00a0 In contrast, the average golfer needs all the distance they can get.<\/p>\n

Yes, I am on the side that believes that our courses are already too green, and golf is needlessly becoming too boring and expensive.\u00a0 The best courses and real golf architectural genius flourish with the ground game, but all become homogenous with an aerial one. Looking forward, our economic models will not sustain wall-to-wall greenness. While we should demand good turf, if we were a little more accepting of occasional brown and gray conditions, we would have not only a more engaging challenge, but likely a more affordable one as well.\u00a0 Perfect green wall-to-wall turf is not perfect for golf.<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 No golf course superintendent paid me to write this!<\/p>\n

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I love the color green and all the implications that the word has for golf.\u00a0 Indeed, the term \u201cgreenkeeper\u201d originally… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2247,334],"tags":[1366,1438,69,1046284,979226,1394,993807,1664,993808,2371,1235,2372],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-course-reviews","category-commentary","tag-pine-valley","tag-merion","tag-pinehurst","tag-pebble-beach","tag-irrigation","tag-shinnecock","tag-brown","tag-golf-course","tag-indian-valley","tag-conditioning","tag-augusta","tag-green"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2010\/07\/P81102551.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15079,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/15079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}