It is consistent, a term much valued in competitive circles. Most PGA TOUR courses have weak grain in the greens, the result of regular cultural practices including daily changes in mowing direction, verticutting and turf grooming, topdressing and brushing. Bentgrasses are less likely to produce grain than the bermudagrasses, probably because of the finer leaf texture and more upright growth habit. This is particularly true of the new generation of creeping bentgrasses, which have fueled the controversy by theoretically possessing no visible grain. The fondness of television analysts for using grain to explain ball roll is understandable.
Television is two-dimensional.
The viewer is unable to see contours in the green from a camera shot. Computer graphics help, but at present they are crude representations of the subtle rises and falls of a putting surface. And there is no way television can depict the general lie of the land on which the course is built. At the TPC at Summerlin in Las Vegas, for instance, the land slopes from the mountains in the west to the city in the east. Contours that seem to be tilted to the west are in fact moving counter to the slope and may actually fall toward the city.