Green design and green accuracy for real courses

[sagevanni]

Hi All,

I just want to make clear that I do all my greens of real courses as close as I can get to the real thing. I design and test my greens on the most difficult Links 2003 settings.

When I get into fictional course all bets are off.

Sage......

[AJ Allen]

I am trying to get my ones close, but not duplicated. if I did that, then front to back slope would make putting almost impossibe on the faster settings in Links. So I have compromised a bit. Kept the slope, but tiered the bigger slopes so that the greens are playable on Fast challenging. I did read in one the forum stickies that the fastest setting was around 18 on the stimp. That is incredibly quick, and with the actual greens that are designed to run at perhaps 11-12 on a good day, it's just not feasible to have them sloping so much. Just my thoughts on the matter

Cheers, AJ

[sagevanni]

Hi AJ,

If someone knows how to design for stimp settings, I'd like to know......

Sage......

[Adelade]

You didnt think I would stay away from posting here did you

I think anyone should make greens however they like doing them, but if pleasing as many as possible is something one is interested in, then the reasonable thing is to make most areas of a green (50-90%) be places where pins for the fastest speeds would be enjoyable, or in cases where you want a character of a severe green then at least have 2-3 different spots for that. I personally think 18 stimp is kinda ridiculous but I understand why some people enjoy it. Realistic pins imo means max 4% slope, and preferably max 3%. pmgolf posted this quote to me a while back which I think is quite relevant:

"John Sanford, president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, says he has a rule of thumb for establishing pinnable positions on about 75 percent of the surface of the greens that he designs. “You can’t have a hole positioned anywhere where the slope is more than 3 percent,” he said. “Otherwise, you might just miss the hole, and now you’re 10 feet by, coming back. That’s not fair."

Sure, its possible that may be mostly with usual PGA stimp speeds in mind (I dont know), but I dont see why hackers on a municipal course for example would enjoy pins on more tilt just because the greens are slower... You can check degree of slope in practice mode with the BLI (one third of the bottom bar of the aim marker filled with yellow is 3.33% slope etc). Personally I try to make most my pins be within the range of 1% to 2.5% slope, which I think makes for the most fun golf with anything above 8 or so stimp, but for longer putts its nice if there is some steeper slope here and there to deal with. I also think there shouldnt be any big changes in slope within a 3 feet radius of a pin.

Imo greens having severe slopes is something that makes for fun golf, just dont plant pins there and have a reasonable amount of areas that arent severely sloping at the same time. Im pretty sure people playing on Fc/Fc arent asking for all parts of greens to be low degree of slope.

When it comes to replicating real greens, well I believe opinions differ but if we would only accept accurate greens then there wouldnt be many real courses at all to play would there? If there isn't a lot of info to go on, create something that plays fun and in itself is realistic. Hopefully at the very least there are pictures where one can discern the major tiers or general direction of slope for example and feature those to a reasonable extent. For most US courses you can make those two things out in Google Earth if you look closely. Not fully accurate, but the general idea. Asking for more accuracy than that is just a way of killing the designer community.

[AJ Allen]

This forum post shows the stimp meter readings, they range from 5 up to 18. https://linkscorner.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11

Personally, in real life I have always had trouble with fast greens (which for me is anything over about 11). I can't imagine playing with the greens running at 18. I know I have a number of courses in links that are simply unplayable on the fastest settings. Miss an uphill put and the ball comes back to you and runs off the green. That is just no fun at all.

I remember the first time I played on really quick greens in real life!), which was at Terrace Downs in NZ. https://terracedowns.co.nz/

On the 4th, I had a 30ft straightish putt, slightly downhill, so I gave the ball a light tap... thought I had underhit it and it was lucky if it got halfway there. But the ball kept slowly rolling, and rolling, and rolling, ended up 30' past the hole. I honestly don't think I could have hit it any softer. I didn't enjoy my round!

It's the same with Links2003 courses, it's fine to have difficult putts, but when you can be punished with a 3 or 4 putt for a good approach that lands almost in the perfect spot, then I'm not going to play on fast settings. Nothing wrong with playing a round on med speeds eh?

Cheers, AJ

[pmgolf]

I feel that the 18 stimp number is a bit of an exaggeration. Even with Fc Fc at Augusta the greens are puttable if you know how to do it. If you have a 30 foot putt, and all of it is downhill, play it for half the distance, or 15 feet. If you have a 40 foot putt and 20 feet of it is downhill, play it for the normal 20 feet plus half for downhill part, 10 more feet, for 30 feet. If your ball might go down a severe downhill slope, like a 5 foot putt that if it goes more than 2 feet past it's going to catch a slope and roll on down the hill, you might get cocky and still hit it firmly, knowing you won't miss, or you could play smart and hit a 2 or 3 foot lag putt that might not get to the hole, but you'll be safe. The cocky guy will be the one who, if he misses, will immediately afterward go and post to talk about how unfair the speed is, but the smart guy is probably a golfer in real life!

Pete

[Ian Wells]

Sorry for coming late to this topic, but I am trying to make the pin settings for Wade Hampton and I was looking for some clarification, hence I arrived here. I am somewhat confused (not for the first time, nor the last).
From the old forum I found two post regarding stimp settings. One list states Fch/Fch has a stimp rating of 18, and the other table gives it a rating of 14.9.
I have also a graph I found from the old forum which correlates the stimp value to maximum slope in degrees. From this graph a stimp of 18 equates to a maximum slope of 1.1°, and 14.9 equates to 1.5°.

I think two or three greens on Wade Hampton will be challenging to get the maximum slope of 1.5°. (I am disregarding the stimp reading of 18). If I am unable to get the strict maximum slope on the two or three greens is it still worth making the other holes playable for Fch/Fch and just do the best possible with the other greens? Or will it be too much of a disappointment for players?

In a related subject, I read a post from Stephen Sullivan regardng pin ratings 1-6 Easy, 7-12 Normal, 13-18 Hard. How does this work with allocating pin rating for F/ch/Fch?
Would it be acceptable to allocate pins 15-18 for Fch/Fch and rated Hard, with the other pins divided between 1 to 14? (Players playing other than Fch/Fch will be confused with the Hard rating?)

I would appreciate any thoughts.
Ian

I have planted the pins on green 10, one of the problem greens, and there is no way that it is possible to play Fch/Fch. Any ball above the pin or to the side is impossible to play. I will plant the pins for F/F.