[Mick]

on Nicklaus, I thought his comments about the US Open fairways today being faster than US Open greens of yore to be pretty interesting.

I grew up playing at Pasatiempo, an Alisterr MacKenzie course that was designed and largely constructed in the 1920s.  MacKenzie was a camouflage expert in the military (he was also a trained surgeon) and he brought principles of camouflage to the courses he designed, including Augusta, Cypress Point, Pasatiempo and many, many others.  If you've played the course, you know that there are some very steep slopes on the greens, and those greens were built with late 1920s technology in mind.  Putter technology and technology to manicure greens has improved over the past 87 years, so I suspect that Nicklaus's comment was accurate.  The putters used in the 1960s were pretty terrible.

[Mick]

on Nicklaus, I thought his comments about the US Open fairways today being faster than US Open greens of yore to be pretty interesting.

I grew up playing at Pasatiempo, an Alisterr MacKenzie course that was designed and largely constructed in the 1920s.  MacKenzie was a camouflage expert in the military (he was also a trained surgeon) and he brought principles of camouflage to the courses he designed, including Augusta, Cypress Point, Pasatiempo and many, many others.  If you've played the course, you know that there are some very steep slopes on the greens, and those greens were built with late 1920s technology in mind.  Putter technology and technology to manicure greens has improved over the past 87 years, so I suspect that Nicklaus's comment was accurate.  The putters used in the 1960s were pretty terrible.