Tom Athy, a certified superintendent with a rep for quick greens, reluctantly takes the Gale Sayers approach when admitting who exactly dictates green speed:

The club is first.

The playing majority is second.

When it comes to the green speed dilemma, sooner or later healthy greens — and reputations — are going to suffer.

And I am third.

Athy accepts this, even if it means sometimes putting aside the best interests of his 18 pampered possessions at Omaha (Neb.) Country Club. Ever the realist, he goes as far as to amend Arnold Palmer, who once said that in order to succeed in the golf business, one must identify what the majority of otherwise finicky golfers wants and provide for it.

"For the most part that is an excellent quote," Athy says. "In reality, though, you need to find the course conditions that the 'power' within the club would like to see and provide for them. Then you hope this group doesn't change too often. Otherwise you can look pretty bad."

Change is one thing. Superintendents roll with it. But when it comes to the green speed issue, those powers that be have taken change to the nth degree. And sooner or later — if not already — healthy greens are going to blemish, along with the reputations of their keepers.

Don Sutton, of Kinsale Golf Club (shown here) outside Columbus, Ohio, says the green speed issue hasn't 'gone away at all.'

"I don't know if it's gotten worse in the last year, but I would say that it's still probably the biggest issue that's facing us," says Don Sutton, the certified superintendent at Kinsale Golf Club in Powell, Ohio. "I don't think it's gone away at all."

Will it ever disappear?

"You would think at some point we would have to hit a limit to where these greens are able to survive and stay healthy over a five- or 10-year period," Sutton says.

With that bar still rising (and turf heights going the other way), many superintendents are at the mercy of their managers, who often cater to the wants — realistic or not — of their customers.

"I would say in most cases it's probably from hearing the pressures from the golfers," Sutton says. "There's that fear at most courses that if they're not as fast as the neighboring courses, they're going to lose rounds of golf."

It doesn't help that ordinary players desire pro-worthy conditions. It's gotten to the point where some are even caught packing their own Stimpmeters.

"If somebody plays the course down the street and it's at a 12 (on the Stimpmeter), it kind of gets blown out of proportion that that's what its greens are rolling every day," Sutton says. "And it kind of spreads like wildfire through the golfers. They'll make claims that they just played a course and the greens were 13, so why aren't ours? Or what can you do to get them there? And the reality is most golfers can't tell the difference between a 9 and a 10 or a 10 to a 13 Stimpmeter reading."

Worse yet, it's almost futile, according to Athy, to try and convince someone that speed kills.

"Good luck!" he says. "I know that, for myself and most of my colleagues at the private clubs in Nebraska, slow greens are the fast track to a new position."