Golfdom, August 2010

w w w g o l f d o m c o m Golfdom 49 Continued on page 50 Continued from page 30 Given the publics negative reaction to the U S Open it may be time for the USGA to re imagine how it pushes for more green golf courses The Green Dilemma gest will tell you after receiving hate mail for preaching the cause of better practices this has become a politically sensitive issue Part of the problem is generational Your residents of The Villages who have book shelves stocked with Tom Brokaw books also love their Arnold Palmer their palm trees and yes dark green grass Their offspring the dreaded baby boomers want all of the above plus greens Stimping fast and cut twice a day if possible And then you have the white belt wearing generation slugging away with the latest 400 hockey sticks Theyve been raised to respect carbon footprints and dont think twice about saving their plastic water bottles for the recycling bin And the tie that binds them all together into a mass of unforgiving golfers who arent ready for brown turf and native areas High definition television It was rumored and even stated publicly by one USGA staffer that Hyler went so far as to ask NBC to remove green grass friendly filters from the TV cameras for this years U S Open Absolutely not Hyler told me just minutes after his first U S Open press conference at Pebble Beach Hyler went on to say he doesnt even know if such filters exist and that he would never go that far with his voluntary role as president Besides the good folks at Pebble Beach were already amazing stewards and had the golf course looking well maintained but certainly on the lean side Still Hyler sent a message at the press conference that was not heard by most golfers You will not see a golf course this week thats brown he told a packed house of writers who were more interested in the announcement of future venues including the linksy Erin Hills Our goal is to provide firm and fast conditions for the championship using careful irrigation management Its important to remember here at Pebble Beach that the grass is primarily Poa annua and perennial ryegrass And if that grass were to get brown it would be dead Yet if you talked to any golfers after the championship thats all they saw Brown Dead Bad The first indication I had that the USGA needs to initiate a massive marketing campaign came at this years Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass where superintendent Tom Vlach had the greens absolutely perfect despite a brutal winter and cool spring And admittedly the turf looked awful and the ball did bounce a bunch by the time leaders rolled around during the early evening especially when viewed on a 1080 line television compared with half of that on standard definition televisions For weeks after all golfers could say when I mentioned having been to the Players What was with those greens The same questions have dogged me and surely many others since the U S Open at Pebble Beach The excessive peanut gallery chatter even prompted an online essay by the USGAs Pat Gross titled Beauty Is In the Eye Of the Beholder The U S Open is not about cosmetics Gross wrote Its about providing a challenging and rigorous test to identify the best player Producing a cosmetically attractive golf course would have been the easy task a little more water a touch of fertilizer and we would have had green pretty putting greens and soft