What Are Dual Greens (Alternate Greens) on a Golf Course?
Do you know what the term "dual greens" refers to on a golf course? When this term is applied, a golfer will encounter something that isn't that common in the golf world: a hole that has two, rather than one, putting greens.
Dual greens — two greens on the same hole (although only one of them is in play at any given time) — are also called alternate greens. "Alternate greens" used to be the more commonly used term, but in recent years "dual greens" has overtaken "alternate greens" as the preferred term.
When two different putting greens are built and maintained on the same golf hole — e.g., the No. 3 hole has one teeing ground, one fairway, as per usual, but two different putting greens — that is called a dual green or alternate green. Note that dual greens are different from double greens. A double green is just one very large putting surface that has two different holes cut in it, two different flagsticks at the same time. "Dual green" refers to two separate, distinct putting greens (each with its own complex of design elements, such as bunkers, rough and slopes) on the same hole.
Why would a golf course put two different greens on one hole? There are multiple reasons a golf course designer or club might do that. In the United States, for example, probably the most common place to find dual greens is on a 9-hole course. To get a full, 18-hole round, a golfer must go around a 9-hole course twice. When a 9-hole course has dual greens, golfers will play to one set of those greens on the first nine, then play to the other set of greens on the second nine, thus creating some distinction between the two nines. (Dual greens are still rare on 9-hole courses, though, and alternate tees are more common than alternate greens. Maintaining two different teeing areas on a hole is a lot easier, and less expensive, than maintaining two separate putting surfaces.)
Another reason is when there are two very different golf seasons within a year in some geographic locations due to weather. Dual greens are more common in Japan, for example, where some courses are built with a second set of greens, and on each hole the two greens might have different turfgrasses. On such courses, one set of greens with warm-season grasses will be used during the hotter months; the other, with cool-season grasses, will be used during colder months.
Some golf courses that are very busy, that see very heavy traffic from golfers, might choose to use dual greens on a some (or even all) holes as a maintainence technique — switching play from day-to-day or week-to-week in order to always have a good putting surface on one of the greens. (Turfgrass advances have made the warm-season/cool-season dichotomy described above less prominent as a reason for having alternate greens, but many courses in Japan and Korea that originally had dual greens for that reason now build them as a way to always provide quality putting surfaces.)
Some golf course designers might include one or more alternate greens within a course simply to provide a strategic alternative, a different look, for golfers who play the course regularly. And some golf courses mow temporary alternate putting surfaces to use when the hole's main putting green is undergoing aeration or repair.
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