Please, Enough With The Crazy Stupid Unrealistically Firm Greens

[jrz]

Members of the TGC tour community,

I'd like to propose that we figure out a way to eliminate from the tour courses that exhibit very unrealistic greens. We just played one that had stupid firm greens, and I just played a few practice holes on New Bahamas Classic, and surprise surprise - the greens are like cement. Wedges into the green were picking up speed after contacting the surface and rolling into the rough.

People have complained about this in the past but we keep encountering very unrealistic courses. I don't know who or how the courses are picked, but it's time for us as a community to make a change in this process.

Let's please start with a hopefully simple question: How are courses picked for the tour?

Thank you,
Joe

[aja]

Whoa! Nice start to an otherwise quiet Sunday morning.

I have played the TGC tour in the past so I am taking the liberty to comment on the posters "lament".

Firstly, my understanding of TGC and the TGC Tour is that there is a group of dedicated people, who firstly design the courses that we all get to play, and then there is another group which chooses courses and sets up the Tour. Both activities require effort and are most likely never rewarded with appreciative comments or enough thanks.

Thanks to both the course designers and also to the Tour committee.

Continuing to the "point" of the post. The greens are "unrealistically firm". OK. Are they not firm for everyone playing the Tour? It is a level playing field, isn't it?

There are several options. Best one might be to get involved and make suggestions to the Tour committee for "better" courses. Another option is to not beat yourself or anyone else up about the courses and just sit out the week where a course doesn't meet your expectations.

I'm just a little surprised that, if you have participated in the Tour for a while, that you need to be reminded that there are people who voluntarily get involved and organize the Tour so the rest of us can participate.

Happy golfing!

[jrz]

aja, this post was an attempt to "get involved." I'm not slamming anyone, just pointing out that the current system could probably use help and/or improvement.

Even though we are all on a level playing field, it has been brought up in the past that the community asked for realism while playing on the tour. There is realism when it comes to the design of the course (and how well it matches the course in real life) and there is also playability realism. I can't speak for everyone so I will say that my goal of playing on the tour is to improve my IRL game. I have never played a course with greens as firm as I have seen in some of the courses we play in the tour, and we play courses with super firm greens a good percentage of the time. I am requesting that we look at the courses we have on the tour and take out the ones that do not exhibit real life playability.

[Jwheels9876]

I'd worry about getting rid of the courses that are 7500 yards long before some occasional hard greens. Everyone has to deal with the same greens, not everyone hits it 300 off the Tee or boosts their tee shots to get that extra 15 yards either. IRL I'm sure every course we all play don't have the same soft greens but I'm almost positive 99% of us Don't play from 7500 tee markers.

[gene438]

Sounds like jrz is volunteering to me......thanks.

[jrz]

I'd be happy to test some courses.

[keither5150]

Usually we ( Bubba22,Mthunt, keither5150) divide the courses to test them. We look for various things while testing. Accuracy, playability, length etc. New Bahamas was not on my list to test. I will play a few holes today or tomorrow to check it out. Here are a few things thatI have noticed while testing.

Many times there is not a course available that is accurate to the real life course. Sometimes, the only accurate course is 7400 yards long (KPC beta comes to mind).

Some will find the greens unplayable while others won't have a problem. Look at your backspin with your approach shots. Mthunt will have 6500-8500 backspin on his 130 yard approach. I might have a little less. Mthunt will stick the green better than I will. If you approach shots are coming in at 3000-5000, you will have to make that adjustment when encountering fast greens. A guy can try different balls or change out the hitting surface to increase backspin.

When there are multiple accurate versions of the same course. For example... Pebble Beach, Pinehurst have both long and short versions. We usually alternate between a short and a medium length version (6000-6800 yards)

When there isn't an accurate course available we will insert a filler course.....usually one that has been used before.


JRZ, thanks for bringing this to our attention. There is still time to change the course if need be.

[MN Gopher]

Just played New Bahamas Classic to preview next week's event. Okay, with all apologies to the creator, but this course is probably one of wackier I have played, IRL or online.

I would agree, the greens are hard - but that is the least of the issues with this particular course.

I would recommend you play it - let us know what you think of the forced carries, the yardage / par on holes, the wacky elevation changes, and the narrow chutes you have to hit if you want any chance at a green.

If you plan to hit a driver more than 275 yd, you better hit the Q preview first as the fairways end at that range on a bunch of holes.

Pretty sure with like 90% of Bahamas within 5' of sea level, would love to know where this course could possibly exist in the Bahamas.

I have been super happy with the tours and all the work that goes into running them, but would agree this course may need a second look.

[MN Gopher]

Looks like this one got swapped out for a more reliable. Thanks guys. I was kind of looking forward to seeing what sort of scores would roll in on the Bahamas course 🏌️

[mthunt]

Here's the short answer. We didn't pick these courses.

[jrz]

What’s the long answer? Who did pick them?

[BSCampbell]

I would have to agree with Gopher on this one. Played a practice round a few weeks or so ago and don't remember the greens being a big issue, but the layout itself was quite the eye opener. The tour is a great thing and not everyone will like every course, but this one may be in a league by itself.

[Shardak]

I liked the course overall, greens didnt seem too terrible for me.

I have switched to Mizuno MP5 irons and get an extra 500-1000 spin on each iron compared to my old Apex CF16s's, so that may be helping a little. I didnt hit anything that seemed outside the ordinary (for TGC at least).

I would give it a 7/10 this week.

[epic]

Courses do not represent IRL courses and I have not really seen any really the totally impressed me as authentic to real life, been that way since owning TGC. Wanted a more realistic version and went to a different software for courses and tournaments and have been very happy since. Tgc2 might change how courses are designed and not let every course on its server as its ridiculous on 30 versions of pebble beach or pinehurst as mentioned above and still not true to life but until this gets cleaned up will stick with JNPG as its very close on the realism and ball physics, and i would rather have 250 courses that are based on lidar then 100,000 base on fantasy.

[jrz]

I tried JPNG but kind of missed yelling at John in the background...

Do you really find the ball physics different? And, out of curiosity, which LM are you using?

[jrz]

I just played nine holes on the Tiburon Golf Club we'll be playing in a couple of weeks and it's a lot of the same story. Greens are extremely firm and nearly impossible to hold. Hole 2 is an island green with nothing around it. A nine iron into the front of the green landed with 8k backspin and rolled through to the back fringe. Hole 3 requires a long iron shot to a landing area that is the size of a postage stamp. Hole 5 has a 250 yard carry off of the tee, over water, with no options to the left or right.

I get that we are all playing the same course every week, which makes it a kind of level playing field, but I think we need to keep the quality of the tour trending in a positive direction. I am more than happy to help evaluate courses before they are put on the schedule, but we need some transparency into the process of picking courses.

I encourage anyone might have doubts (or thinks I am just being a whiner) me to try the first five holes of Tiburon Golf Club. It's another very unrealistic experience.

[wbond]

Tiburon sounds like another GEM. I can't carry 250 unless I have one of those holes that are more than 100' downhill.

[keither5150]

Yeah, Tiburon is pretty bad. I will talk to Bubba and Mthunt.

[mthunt]

You guys have to understand something. Anyone can create a course and give it the name of a famous course. You can add attributes that make it impossible and stupid. Tiburon is one of those courses. Although I hit a PW with 8800 spin and it stopped quickly on 2, 5 is a joke. The whole course is. No time was taken to build it.

None of the current courses were tested by us. They were just put in there. We test the courses to ensure this doesn't happen. There may be 150,000 courses but that doesn't make them good. Most are total garbage. We'll review the courses and remove the ones that are bad.

mthunt

[jrz]

Please understand that I'm not trying to give you or anyone else a hard time. It's a long tour and could be a lot of work, though, so I'm trying to make the experience for everyone a little better.

It was my understanding that you and a couple of others picked the courses that we play. If it's not you guys then who do we need to address this with?

[mthunt]

To me, starting a thread called “Please, Enough With The Crazy Stupid Unrealistically Firm Greens” is giving us a hard time. TGC has overly firm greens. It’s the way it is. Tiburon wasn’t crazy stupid on the firmness but the course is total garbage.

I test the courses but not this round. I removed Tiburon. The rest coming up are fine.

Feedback is always welcome. Keep bringing it.

[Andyman33]

stupid question - why are there 2 tours currentlY?

[mthunt]

Likely a mistaken overlap.

[ProTee United]

There are 2 tours running. See: http://golfsimulatortours.com
We run a special XMAS tour every year with bigger $ prices. Some tour names are the same, but with different courses. We will change the tour names for the XMAS tour.