2010 US OPEN: THE COLOUR OF GREEN

What's wrong with this picture? The greens at the 2010 US Open looks blotchy on television on the supposedly pristine bastion of Pebble Beach. Is the USGA slipping?

Or have we become spoilt by the billiard table consistency seen on PGA tour stops week in week out?

Immaculate greens aren't the holy grail in golf, not in this age of environmentally conscious players anyway. I for one have never judged a green on how it looks. As long as the putts roll true, that's all we can ask.

Still, it is very nice to be able to putt on densely grown grass that feel spongy to the feet.

Ask any course maintenance professional in Singapore and you can expect that the turf on the greens are probably the most difficult to maintain. And that is under weather conditions that are pretty much predictable month in month out.

This is not the case in Pebble Beach. It's geographical position on the peninsular puts it in a precarious meteorological position, with winds blowing in with regularity to dry out the grasses. These winds also blow seeds from varying grasses onto the greens, causing infiltration from different strains. Throw in packed time sheets day in day out, and you have the maintenance crew pulling at their hairs to keep the putting surface in acceptable conditions.

Now that the US Open is in town, it's become a totally different ball game. Hard, firm greens has been the calling card for America's national tournament, and this year is no different. But after the debacle at Shinnecock Hills some years back, they've been quite wary at making the greens ping pong table tops, and low and behold, we've some golfers spin the ball back in the third round.

But even Mike Davis and his able-bodied crew cannot change the turf type on Pebble Beach greens. And it appears, according to Ronald Fream, architect of many courses in and around Singapore, that the nature of poa annua may pose a slight problem for US Open maintenance.

One reason is that in this part of California  can see freezing temperatures when the cold winds blow in from the Pacific. (PS: In this time of year when New York is seeing the thermometer rise to about 80 degrees fahrenheit, the mercury here is struggling to break 70.)

"Poa annua is the indigenous grass of cool coastal areas of california. Its in fairways too, not only greens," says Fream who spends much of his time these days in Johor.

"On greens it should not be mown too close, or can't be cut very short successfully. The TV shows mongralized, diverse strains of poa annua. It can produce seed heads quickly just after mowing. It can mutate over time in place giving the spotty, "clones;" or patches of slightly different strains and colors of grass. hence spotty look. Also, this grass grows fast. players putting at mid morning are seeing a different height of grass than those putting at 5pm. As well these different strains scattered in the clusters or patches with one green grow at different rates. 

"Therefore, some areas can be fractionally taller, higher than an adjacent patch that did not grow as fast.  This produces slightly differing surfaces, not uniform in height, as with pure creeping bent grass, or pure tifdwarf hybrid bermuda grass. These differeng growing speeds are microscopic, but do impact the speed and direction of a putt. this height variation impacts ball roll speed and can cause slight deflections.

"Trying to increase putting speed, "stimp meter " speed, requires lowering the mowing height. Poa annua does not take as close a cutting height as the modern creeping bent grasses that grow in cool areas away from the sea. Too close mowing "shocks" the grass yielding dark off color patches. This effect also reflects the differenf poa annua strains and differing ability to accept closer mowing cutting height.
 
"For the final round the greens will be mown soon before play starts. how ever four hours later, there will begin to be height differentials, that will minutely influence putts. the final two or maybe four or six groups will have putting surfaces subtly, minutely , different from those before. this poa annua effect may help or hurt some players. the roll will be slightly different from a uniform surface."

This all might sound pretty technical to the majority of us who don't even line up our balls when we putt, but for the pros - where missed putts can amount to differences in prize money in the tens of thousands - every little blade on the putting surface counts.

 

 

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