The fine line of fair competition

Part of what makes a major golf championship “major” is the difficult competitive environment. The Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship strive to draw the best from golfers by requiring the highest performance levels.

The golf world is well aware that, at times, the competitive environment was elevated a bit too high, yielding conditions that were almost unplayable. The U.S. Open tournaments at the Olympic Club in 1998 and Shinnecock Hills in 2004 are examples of putting greens becoming unexpectedly slick. As a result, as the Open approaches each year, we see replays of a frustrated Kirk Triplett using his putter to stop a ball from rolling off Olympic Club’s 18th green and the maintenance crew at Shinnecock Hills dragging hoses out to the seventh green to keep it from burning in the New York sun. These images get almost as much play as Payne Stewart’s famous fist pump/leg kick at Pinehurst in 1999.

Hole placements and green speeds are hot topics for all Major venues. At the Masters, we hear about Augusta’s vast and undulating greens. For the British Open, we hear about how the wind dries out a putting surface. And the PGA Championship always does its share to ensure highly challenging adventures on short grass.

The tournament coordinators for events like these make so many correct decisions one would be challenged to count them all. Yet one or two risky decisions that turn out poorly are called into question every year.

What’s fair?

When the performance levels of a golf course are pushed to maximum tolerances, course management becomes increasingly tricky. For example, under ordinary conditions, the placement of a hole on a gentle grade is perfectly acceptable. It works because the players are challenged by breaking putts, yet the ball will stop rolling as the green flattens out below the hole. But if the height of cut is lowered enough, the ball won’t stop rolling. This can be a nightmare for players and tournament officials.

For the purpose of our research, let’s assume that a fair hole location has a minimum of two characteristics:

1. A player can putt from any point on the green and have the ball stop within 1 foot of the hole.

2. A putt from within 5 feet isn’t unrealistically difficult to make.

The first item falls in line with regulation par, which requires two putts once a player reaches the green. The first putt doesn’t necessarily have to be makeable to be fair, but a two-putt should be attainable. For the second characteristic, everything inside 5 feet shouldn’t be a gimme, but close putts shouldn’t require a miracle to be holed.

The average number of putts a PGA Tour player makes from 5 feet is about 1.2, meaning they make about 80 percent of them. A difficult hole location would be one where the average putts from inside 5 feet was dramatically higher than 1.2 or toward the far right side of a normal bell curve. A disastrous hole location is one where the average number of putts is outside a normal curve because the player can’t stop the ball within a foot of the hole or the break around the hole is so severe it makes dramatic turns as it slows.

Typically, such difficulties occur when the primary elements of grade and green speed have been stretched too far and combine for golf’s version of the perfect storm.

Grade vs. friction

Let’s take a closer look at the relationship between grade and friction. Gravity steadily and consistently pulls the ball toward the center of the earth at a rate of 32.2 feet per second squared. Friction is the resistive force that slows the ball down because of its contact with the grass. The longer the grass, the greater the friction. A ball on a perfectly flat putting surface won’t roll on its own; however, as the slope or grade of the surface is increased, there will come a critical point at which the frictional force is overcome, and the ball will begin rolling. That critical point depends on the green speed or Stimpmeter reading. For typical tournament green speeds of 12, the grade at which the ball will roll off its position or accelerate while rolling over is 5.9 percent.

Now consider that every green has a minimum grade of 1 percent to allow water to drain off properly. That leaves a maximum theoretical window of 1 percent to 5.9 percent for placing a hole. However, a player should be able to stop the ball within 1 foot of the hole. Let’s take a closer look at this theoretical window.

Imagine how hard a player would have to strike a ball to have it travel exactly one foot on a perfectly flat green reading 12 on a Stimpmeter. It’s a delicate little stroke. Now tilt that surface to a 5-percent grade, and strike the ball again directly downhill with the same force. It will travel almost 4 feet before stopping. Increase the green speed to 13 on a Stimpmeter, and the ball will travel almost 8 feet – twice as far. Increase the green speed again to 14, and the ball won’t stop rolling. From this we can begin to see how the ball will roll exponentially farther as green speeds increase. The chart on the right shows the relationship.

There’s a critical intersection of green speed and grade that occurs above Stimpmeter readings of 12 and grades greater than 4 percent. If a tournament official puts a hole on a greater-than-4-percent grade and green speeds unexpectedly get a little too fast because of unexpected conditions, a situation arises where players can’t stop the ball within any reasonable distance from the hole, whether on approach, when chipping or while putting. Furthermore, the golf ball will make dramatic turns and keep rolling in the downhill direction near the hole because of the lack of friction that would normally cause it to stop. Both of our fairness benchmarks are missed.

This leads to the first guideline for fair hole placement: Holes shouldn’t be located on a greater-than-3-percent grade.

Elevation and rollout

Similar to grade, there’s a second, equally important way in which hole location and fairness can be analyzed. While the grade of a slope tells us how steep a portion of the green surface is, rollout describes how far a ball will roll down a given elevation change. In other words, we could be discussing a 10-foot putt or a 20-foot putt. The grade percentage isn’t relevant. The key to analysis is the change in elevation.

Where’s the rollout zone? The rollout zone represents how far a ball dropped to the ground from just off the surface at the top of a steep grade would roll downhill. It’s the softest possible putt because the ball begins to roll without even being hit by a putter.

The following chart shows the expected roll distances for a ball dropped at the top of a severe grade (greater than 6 percent), which levels out to 2 percent, assuming a green speed of 12.

If you have a 1-foot elevation change, regardless of grade percentage, leveling out to a 2-percent grade, a dropped ball will roll about 18 feet. Therefore, if you’re placing a hole near a severe grade that represents a 1-foot change in elevation, the hole should be cut no closer than 17 feet from the highest point of the severe slope. The important point isn’t the severity of the grade that determines how far the ball will roll, rather the amount of elevation change down which the ball has to roll. Why 17 feet? It goes back to the first criteria of fairness: The player must be able to putt a ball to within 1 foot of the hole.

These are bare minimum guidelines, assuming a golfer who’s putting down a tier is capable of putting with such a degree of speed control that he can cause the ball to arrive at the top of the slope with practically no speed, just enough to allow gravity to accelerate it down the slope toward the hole. A ball entering the top of the tier with a speed greater than almost zero will travel farther than what the chart above states. With the 18-foot rollout starting from a ball that hasn’t even been hit by a putter, we must stress that 17 feet would be the bare minimum and could even exceed 18 feet, perhaps 20 or 21 feet, to allow for the additional velocity a putted ball would have versus a dropped ball.

So the second guideline for fair hole placement: Holes shouldn’t be located within the rollout zone of a severe grade.

Conclusion

By following the two guidelines concerning grade and rollout zones, tournament officials will be able to secure fair putting conditions even when environmental factors get out of their control.

Competitors will have an opportunity to stop putts within at least one foot of the hole, and putts inside of 5 feet won’t be unrealistically difficult to make. Do these parameters mean the putting game will be easy? No. When it comes to major golf championships, high performance golf courses will have fast and tricky greens that are highly sensitive to putting errors, yet receptive to good putts.

The boundaries of fairness will be more clearly drawn, and decisions will have new cushions of safety as officials set the highest of standards for the world’s best players. And who knows, perhaps the past difficulties of course setup will be forgotten and the negative instances will be lost among a stockpile of challenging yet fair championship putts. GCN

Mark Sweeney is the president of TPS Golf (www.tpsgolf.com) and can be reached at mark.sweeney@tpsgolf.com. Martin Carroll is the vice president of marketing for TPS Golf. He can be reached at martin.carroll@tpsgolf.com.