David Owen: let's go retro—bring back shaggy greens

Golf Digest, April, 2004

Last fall my club's superintendent, Bob, tore up our first green, which had been annoying him for several years. Significant portions had been colonized by Poa annua, crabgrass and pearlwort, and the invaders had survived his less-drastic attempts at eradication. He used a sod cutter to remove the old turf, which he then dumped in the woods near the ninth tee. I grabbed a doormat-size piece for a bare spot in my yard, where pearlwort counts as an upgrade.

With a little luck, we'll be putting on virgin bent grass at the member guest. In the meantime, we've been using part of the first fairway as a temporary green. Bob cuts the temp a bit shorter than regular fairway height, and he top-dresses it frequently, but it's still as slow and inconsistent as a bathroom rug. A few grumpy members skip the first hole entirely, on the grounds that putting on a fairway "isn't golf," but I kind of like it. Our temp putts about the way all greens did a century or so ago, I figure. As I watch my ball hopping and skidding toward the hole, I pretend I'm Old Tom Morris.

The new green, when we're finally able to use it, will probably be slow at first, but I won't really mind that, either. Slow greens require as much putting skill as fast greens do, maybe more. You can never "just get the ball rolling" on a shaggy putting surface. You have to commit to a line absolutely and then accelerate your putter all the way through the ball, just as the experts say you should. Even short putts need to be struck with authority, a fact that can awaken the inner yipper in an otherwise confident player. A fast green will occasionally let you get away with a poke or a jab; a slow green never will.

Dialing back the putting speed on almost all golf courses would be good for the game, according to the agronomists at the U.S. Golf Association. Average greens nowadays are mowed as short as championship greens were 20 or 30 years ago, and their health has suffered as a result. The ailments that doomed my club's first green were probably caused, or at least exacerbated, by the lethal combination of close mowing and heavy play. Shaved greens are especially susceptible to diseases, high temperatures and invasive species, and they take longer to recover when they've been damaged. They also encourage slow play by promoting four-putts and by causing golfers to spend too much time scratching their heads and cursing.

Like most of the world's ills, greens that are too fast for their own good can be blamed on TV: Announcers obsess about putting speed, so you and I obsess about it, too. But there's more to golf than high Stimpmeter readings. I would happily trade a little speed for grass that never had to be torn up by the roots.

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