Had a great weekend trip to Innisbrook but there were some seriously questionable pin placements on the South course. This was (I think) #11. Two guys already blew it past the cup and watched the ball roll out, so my buddy grabbed a video of my ~4' putt. I was putting nearly perpendicular to the slope, missed the cup, and ran out about 30 feet. Another guy hit up the slope, past the cup, watched the ball stop, then roll back (almost back dooring the cup) all the way to his feet where my ball ended. It was super frustrating, but pretty funny in hindsight.
by buktotruth
40 Comments
Did any of you try to hit the cup and make it? /s
Courses are doing this shit all the time without repercussion and it’s actually infuriating. It’s a gimmick if you don’t play much, but playing 2-3 times per week with idiotic pins placed by 15 year olds is infuriating
USGA NEEDS to define pin placement standards for member courses.
There’s no such thing as an illegal pin. An “unfair” one, sure…. but as long as it’s on the putting surface, it’s legal.
The problem with lightning fast greens is that there are so few pinnable areas. If, say, there are 4 good pins on a sloped green thats as fast as this one is, and you constantly put the pins in those 4 places and nowhere else – you’ll have no grass left on those areas.
Its an unwinnable fight: Slow the greens down so there are no carny pins like this? Get complaints about slow greens. Speed the greens up – get shit like this. Only put pins in the “fair” locations? Have a buncha dead grass on the greens from too much traffic.
Also, I don’t know what the temps are like down there right now, but if its like the rest of North America, the grass has signficantly slowed down growing because the temps are cool (even bermuda grass in the south needs HOT weather to grow). My greens are rolling like 15 right now and I havent cut them in 2 weeks. So previously pinnable locations become extremely difficult because the greens are just naturally so much faster because of the lack of growth.
And for us in the north, we have to really watch where we put pins because the greens cant recover from traffic stress this time of year, so we have to start using random pin locations just to give the normal areas a chance to heal.
Thats the superintendent’s POV on this situation. Just try to laugh and maybe give everyone an automatic 2 putt on a green like that. We’re doing our best…. with very few exceptions, not too many turf crews go out there to try to fuck you over. Stuff like this is either because of extenuating circumstances, or an innocent mistake by an employee who didnt realize how quick that putt would be.
Call the police!
Take stroke and distance and try it again. No way I’m putting from the fairway after being that close to the pin.
When the grounds staff is sick of our BS and wants to inflict pain they do stuff like this at my club.
At a local course when I asked why the pins were all placed where they were, I was told… sorry, the guy who does it is legally blind and he changes them in the dark.
Auto 2 putt. Pick it up
Fun fact….There’s no such thing as an illegal pin.
There’s no such thing as an illegal pin…
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in golf. If you’re a greenskeeper reading this: please stop the stimpmeter wars, its a race to the bottom.
I think the real problem is that throughout much of America lightning fast greens have been erroneously equated with “elite” course conditioning. Everybody wants to set up their course like its Sunday at Augusta and stimp the greens to 15, when most golfers don’t the skill or experience to play at those speeds and the contours on most greens (especially at older courses) aren’t designed to be played at stimps above 10 or 11.
Case in point there’s a beautiful Tillinghast course up near me (Binghamton Country Club) that completely ruins the playing experience because they keep their greens somewhere between 13-15 when that type of speed wasn’t even possible when Tilly built the course and designed the greens. So you get a lot of shit like this. Its absolute madness.
TIL there’s no rules. I thought holes had to be a certain distance away from a slope that won’t slow the ball.
Gotta just pull the Phil at shinnecock on this one
No actual rules on pin placement, just best practices. So it’s a legal pin…just a greenskeeper who woke up and chose violence today.
Must have been one of those groundskeepers revenge tournies
Never up, never in.
What’s illegal about this? I’m not aware of any rules that govern pin placement.
I played the Island Course there last weekend and there were a couple similar pin placements. They were getting ready to overseed the very next day so this was probably the fastest they’ll ever play.
Any chance there was a crybaby tournament happening? I see this happen all the time during a crybaby.
Played a course this year where the green had like a valley in it, and the pin was like ON the slope of the other side.
The valley was literally like a four or five foot drop that was 8 feet wide. The two slopes on the sides were like 30 degree inclines
Keep it below the hole.
I really hate it when I’m watching a tournament on TV and the pros are whining about “unfair” pin placements.
As long as everyone has to play the same greens. There is no such thing as unfair.
Shoulda gone full Mickelson there, my friend.
With a location like that I prefer whoever is lowest to the hole goes first
Just needs a little more grass.
Most courses are not designed to have greens that fast. The problem isn’t the location, it’s the cut of the green. PGA venues can run a 15 stimp and 4 pin locations because it’s really only used that way for 1 week a year. Your local public course should have 6 to 8 different locations to spread out the foot traffic, and it’s hard to do that with fast greens unless they are very big or very flat. A typical public course should be running somewhere between 8-11 on the stimp.
Perfect speed I say
Next putt is straight uphill at least.
You gonna teach how to play
Yeah that’s illegal. Cresta Verde in CA had a similar situation. Hole 16. I had a putt for Par :4. But walked away with a 9. It took me 5 strokes to sink it.
False front or false back?…nah let’s make it a false middle
Cut the Superintendent some Slack, He came over From Bobs Putt Putt Kingdom, He WANTED to put a Clowns Mouth around the hole but was denied
Somedays the Greenskeeper wakes up and chooses violence.
Looks like a good money game pin!
That’s when you do a phil and hit it while moving and take the 2 stroke penalty
Great explanation of tough pin placements
, “st andre pin placement” https://share.google/xNBtWe1ChAa6yaot3
And rounds on this shit take forever! Fuck this shit, I played right after a greenskeepers revenge type tournament a couple years ago where they put the pins really close to edges and always on severe slopes then rolled the shit out of them. Round took 6 hours when it normally takes 4.5. And the course wasn’t even that full in front of us, the tournament was a shotgun start and emptied the course.
We just had a toughest pin two-man scramble at my club this past weekend. First hole, we’re on in 2 with about a 20 foot putt for birdie. We carded a 9 and only had the one putt. You could not get the ball within 10 feet of the pin and it stay on the green. Eventually my buddy holed the chip to end our misery.
greenskeepers share the burden of slow play when they do crap like this. do yourself and everyone a favor – when you deal with stuff like this, take a putt at it, and if it doesn’t go in, just pick up the ball and call it a 2 putt. you’ll be happier, and everyone behind you will be happier.
3 putt limit and go to the next tee.