Posted 4/14/02 8:38 pm ET

How fast is fast?

It's beginning to look a lot like Masters as Adam Hagy mows the grass near the big oak by the clubhouse at Augusta National. Michael Holahan/Augusta Chronicle

By David Westin
The Augusta Chronicle

Champions on the greens at the Masters

The consensus among PGA Tour golfers is that Augusta National Golf Club's bentgrass greens are the fastest putting surfaces they see each year.

Just how fast are they? Only Augusta National officials know, and they're not talking.

The club won't reveal what the greens measure on a Stimpmeter, the instrument used to gauge the speed of a green.

Named after its inventor, Edward S. Stimpson, it was created in 1936 and adopted by the U.S. Golf Association in 1978.

The Stimpmeter measures the average number of feet a ball rolls after being released from a chute.

Through comparison with courses that do release Stimpmeter figures, it is estimated that Augusta National's greens are between 12-15 on the Stimpmeter.

When the bentgrass replaced Bermuda grass on the Augusta National greens in the 1981 Masters, the club wasn't so secretive about how fast the greens were. Two days before the tournament that year, then-chairman Hord Hardin said the greens were reading at 9.9 on the Stimpmeter and the club wanted them to roll at 10 for the tournament rounds.

In the 20 years since, Masters Tournament regulars believe the greens have only gotten faster.

At the 2000 Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, golf course superintendent Ralph Kepple was instructed by the PGA Tour to have his greens ``Stimp'' at 11.5.

``They wanted to have a major championship feel,'' said Kepple, who keeps East Lake's bentgrass greens between 9-10 for most of the year.

Kepple said the fastest greens he's ever seen were in a Nike Tour Championship event at Settindown Creek near Atlanta one year. They measured at 15 on the Stimpmeter.

``That was sort of by accident,'' Kepple said. ``They had a frost a couple of days before the final round. What we find with frost is your growth of the plant pretty much shuts down and you can lose control of that speed really fast because the grass doesn't grow for a couple of days.''

On the night before the final round of the Nike Tour Championship, the greens were rolled, compacting the grass. The next morning, the greens measured at 15.

That figure could be comparable to what Augusta National's greens are all the time, Kepple said.

``We don't know what Augusta's are, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were in that range,'' he said.

``Year in and year out, they're the fastest greens we play,'' said 1987 Masters champion Larry Mize.

``Oakmont's greens in the 1994 U.S. Open were faster,'' Loren Roberts said. ``I can't think of a tournament other than that where they were faster than the Masters.''

``I'd hate to put a (Stimpmeter) number on Augusta's greens, but they're fast - they're the fastest,'' said Curtis Strange, who played in 17 Masters.

``They're probably 12 or 12.5,'' Stewart Cink said. ``It's hard to say because there are never any flat putts. Because the greens have so much undulation and they're so fast, you have to play even that much more break.''

Before Cink made his Masters debut in 1997, he thought the talk about how fast the greens were ``was just a bunch of TV hype.''

He found out differently in the first round.

``They weren't just hyping it up, it was true,'' Cink said. ``I was a little bit blown away by it. Those were the fastest greens I'd ever seen because I wasn't prepared for it.''

Roberts, one of the top putters on the PGA Tour, calls the Augusta National's greens ``the toughest to putt that we play. They require a lot of imagination because there is so much slope to them. What makes them tough to prepare for is because it seems to me the speed changes so much from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning. They do a lot of preparation Wednesday night after we're gone.''

Kepple has had the opportunity to play the Augusta National once, with a member.

``To see their greens, you wonder how they can get them to the speed they do,'' Kepple said.

Some Masters participants over the years, including Fuzzy Zoeller, have said the greens in certain years were so fast they bordered on being unfair.

``Fair is a relative term to me,'' Kepple said. ``Somebody is obviously able to stop the ball around the hole. If they get them to the speed where somebody can't stop it at the hole, then it's not fair. I've never seen it happen there, though I've seen it get awfully close.''

 

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