It’s Spring. Tiger Woods has just won his latest Masters.  Most golfers are fresh from the memory of great golf shots, beautiful vistas across perfectly manicured fairways and greens, pristine white sanded bunkers with edges so clean and sharp that you almost feel like you could shave with the edges, and lingering in the backs of their brains is the voice of announcers talking about green speeds of 12+ feet on the Stimp meter.  “Why can’t I have greens like that at our club?” is the mantra of the day for many of those privileged enough to attend the event and countless more of those that watched on TV.

 

Augusta National Golf Club has always been a leader in golf course maintenance and is considered by many to be the standard by which all courses are measured.  However, one has to question whether this standard is realistic or even good for the game of golf.  The quick answer for the question of is it realistic is no, not for most clubs and certainly not all the time.  We often forget that Augusta National is a unique situation.  What other course do you know that is closed for several months a year and can make major changes and improvements without disrupting play, that has a major tournament that generates significant funds that can be used to improve and maintain the course, that has it’s event in the perfect time of year for the course and its surroundings to look their best, and that only really gets seen for that one weekend.  So to go back to your club and expect it to be maintained like Augusta every day of the year is certainly not realistic.

 

The more difficult question is whether this level of expectation is good for the game.  While there is no question that it benefits the game to have a showcase for the talent of its players and an example of the best possible conditioning of a course, the expectation for this level of maintenance is not good for the long-term future of the game.

 

Golf is an expensive sport and the higher we raise the bar on our maintenance expectations the more expensive it is to meet those expectations.  Believe me, the talented members of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, your golf course superintendent, will not only attempt to meet your expectations, but will try to find ways to one up their neighbor.  In the long run the game becomes even more expensive.

 

Higher green speeds also mean that golf course architects, like myself, have to soften the slopes in our greens designs so that balls will stay on the greens when putted.  The result is less interesting greens. If green speeds get too fast on older greens, clubs will find that certain pin positions that used to be interesting have become nightmarish or unusable.  The ultimate outcome is for the green to be rebuilt and recontoured.

 

Perfectly green, no weeds, and no disease also has its issues.  Perfectly green requires more water, a major factor in many parts of the country.  It also reduces ball roll and makes the course play much longer, not a good thing for the average player.  Golf is intended to be played on hard and fast turf with roll a major part of the game.  More water means more weed and disease pressure and more chemicals applied.  

In this era of better equipment that mostly benefits the longest hitters with the higher club head speeds, golf needs to return to hard and fast turf, where the focus is on playability rather than perfection of appearance.  This will allow the player with slower swing speeds to get the most out of their shots and return the run-up shot to the game.  Over the long term, cost will go down and the game will become more affordable for many.

 

So let’s admire the Augusta National’s, U.S. Open courses for what they are and let’s recognize that golf will be better off with conditions and expectations that are somewhat different in appearance, but are possibly even more playable for most golfers.