Embarrassing painted dirt greens used at Shriners Open Monday qualifier course

On Monday night, a mildly intriguing but ambiguous tweet from Joe Ogilvie flashed across my timeline. Ogilvie had just played in a Monday qualifier in Nevada but just missed out on making it into the field for this week’s Shriners Open in Las Vegas. He’s a good and candid twitterer for golf folk, and he was definitely mad about...something:

Those are all good points about what’s wrong with design (and sustainability and water usage are two of the bigger issues in course architecture) and the game as a whole right now.

But from the looks of it, Coyote Springs could use a bit more irrigation and water up on the putting surfaces. Jamie Lovemark, once hailed as one of the up-and-coming American golf stars and now working his way back from a slew of injuries, tweeted a picture of one of the greens that has to be an embarrassment to the Tour:

Some nice punched painted dirt for these guys who are grinding on the fringes of the fall series and start of the Tour’s new wraparound schedule. It’s not the most glamorous stretch of the schedule, but that green is worse than most dog tracks patronized by weekend muni hackers.

Four players from the 98 in attendance at Coyote Springs got through to TPC Summerlin to round out the 132-man field. Kyle Reifers, Chris Smith, Tim Wilkinson, and Chad Collins will tee it up at the Shriners on Thursday. But it certainly wasn’t a good start to the week in Nevada.

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