Golf Course Architecture - Issue 73, July 2023

Ibus, quassus sitat. Luptatur? Quis as dolupta ssitae. Cienit, qui oditiatet faciatiam vel ma sam rem lant, sum am quis sit aut ut rest od quos magnimi nctore, expel in earumque ellut volupitibus di ipsamust quat es mossit undi re nimus. Epro totatent explias im ut mossum ideri cusa dolles 39 Edward Stimpson, the state amateur golf champion of Massachusetts, invented the measuring device that bears his name after watching the 1935 US Open at Oakmont, seeing Gene Sarazen putt off a green, and wondering how fast the greens were rolling. And ever since, at least according to one view, a simple measuring tool has become the agent of an arms race, a competition among courses to have faster and faster greens. The Stimpmeter, so this argument runs, is a scourge, a device that encourages golfers to ask, ‘How fast are the greens today?’, with a subtext that hints, ‘Make them faster’. All at the expense, it is said, of the architectural interest of the same greens: as the ball rolls more, so the slopes need to be gentler to prevent putting from becoming a lottery. Can architects convince their clients to keep greens at speeds that allow them to build contoured surfaces, or are we now in a mostly flat era? Adam Lawrence reports. Photo: Vaughn Halyard Although some greens at Landmand are wild, as seen here on the seventeenth, King-Collins designed them big enough so that they can run at 10 feet on the Stimp and have lots of pinnable areas

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