"Drive for show. putt for dough!" If you’ve ever doubted the wisdom of that age-old golf ditty, let me enlighten you. Statistics show that the player in 125th place on the PGA Tour money list could add more than $1 million a year to his earnings by simply making just one more putt per round. And though your run-of-the-mill Joe Hacker won’t get rich by improving his putting, he might feel like a million bucks if he could knock a few long ones in the cup now and then.

"Putting accounts for 43 percent of the average amateur’s total strokes," short-game guru Dave Pelz once told me. "But that same golfer spends less than 15 percent of his practice time on the putting green."

At least, all that was my rationalization for a decade-long dream of installing a putting green in my backyard. My wife, of course, thought I was crazy.

It did not take me long to learn that, once again, she was right. Even if I managed to construct a quality green with proper drainage and irrigation, then established a healthy bent grass or Bermuda putting surface, I’d still be faced with watering, fertilizing, and — worst of all — constant mowing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really like to mow — especially not every day, which is what a good putting surface requires. Like so many golf dreams, my backyard putting green fell by the wayside, replaced by driving the miles back and forth from my home in Austin, Texas, to Barton Creek Resort & Spa, which has an army of workers to maintain its short-game practice area.

But a funny thing happened on my way to the course. Artificial turf manufacturers began to design synthetic putting surfaces that provide the same kind of roll and speed as real bent grass greens, but with almost none of the maintenance hassles. As these new turfs got better and better, I could feel my backyard dream once again springing to life.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
On a golf trip during the past year, I lucked into a round of golf with Gary Poole, one of the owners of Putting Greens Direct, a Florida-based company that installs artificial putting greens nationwide.

"We’ve built greens for a number of PGA pros," Poole commented during our round, as he made putt after putt on huge rolling greens.

"What does it cost?" I asked, cutting straight to the chase.

"The average backyard green is around 700 square feet," Poole explained, "and costs maybe $15 per square foot, depending on extras."

Ten thousand bucks, I thought. My wife really is gonna think I’m crazy. But I knew I was hooked when I started rehearsing my pitch: "We’ll have less yard to maintain, and think of the value it’ll add to our house."

Here’s the really good part: She went for it.

A few months later, two installers from Putting Greens Direct traveled to Texas and set about turning my dream into a reality.

Jason Meersman and Michael Zumpone had converted backyards all over the country into golf fantasies, so I figured they’d have no problem working their magic on the barest, most sunburned part of my own yard. "If grass won’t grow here," I told them, "then it’s the perfect place for the artificial stuff."

After spray painting the outline of my new green, Michael used a gasoline-powered sod cutter to remove the existing grass and weeds from the green site. Jason then reshaped the area with one of those nifty double-tracked Bobcats, which was followed by the arrival of a huge dump truck that dropped 18 tons of crushed aggregate — tiny stones that would soon form the foundation of my green.

Though I’d intended to make only occasional checks on the construction process, my excitement soon had me working alongside the crew. Once the crushed base had been spread evenly, then compacted with a big double-drum roller, the real fun began.

To give the green the varying putts and subtle breaks that I felt would most help my game, the entire rock subsurface was contoured with a large flat rake. For a time, I was content to point at various spots and direct Jason to add a little here or take off a little over there. But before long, pointing wasn’t enough.

"You mind if I give it a try?" I asked.

"It’s your green," Jason replied. "You should get it the way you want it. Some customers just show us the site and say ‘build a green,’ but others want to be hands-on all the time. One pro did all the final shaping on his big green that has multiple tiers and lots of undulations."

Of course, the only difference was that the pro in question had won more than $4 million on the PGA Tour and knows exactly what he’s doing. I, on the other hand, once won a dozen golf balls, all of which I lost.

Luckily, my lack of green-shaping knowledge was made up for by Jason, a low-handicapper who once held the course record at the Fazio course at the Treetops Resort in his home state of Michigan.

"The green is going to be faster than you realize and you want it to be good, not goofy," Jason reminded me whenever I started creating any severe slopes. After the final contours were given one last compacting, we were ready to roll out the putting surface, a single giant piece of rubber-backed nylon turf that immediately transformed the site from glaring white rock to a lush green putting surface.

Using a commercial carpet cutter, Jason created some graceful sweeping curves on the edges of my green, then made matching cuts in large pieces of artificial fringe turf that would provide areas from which I could practice my chipping. When all the turf was seamed together, the cups were cut into the putting surface and dug into place.

FINISHING TOUCHES
The final steps included the spreading of a layer of fine-grained sandblasting sand on the putting surface, then brushing that sand down into the turf to keep the fibers standing tall and to give the whole green a uniform roll. Brian Foster, the director of operations for United Turf Industries — another leader in the field of home putting greens — said he prefers longer fibers and heavier sand applications of his company’s polypropylene turf, which is installed across the country under the name SofTrak Putting Greens.

"A lot of research and development went into making our turf," Foster said, "because we wanted it to not only putt well, but to accept a variety of pitch shots the same as a real grass green."

One of the secrets to landing a ball softly on SofTrak’s greens is a thicker application of sand to their long turf fibers, only the tops of which are visible when the green is finished. But that extra sand also means more maintenance. The biggest decision I faced in the whole process came down to the choice of nylon versus polypropylene.

"It’s true that poly greens hold a long pitch shot better," acknowledged Foster’s competitor Gary Poole. "But nylon rolls better for putting, requires less additional sanding and rolling, and comes with a 12-year warranty, which is twice the guarantee of most poly greens."

"Bottom line," Poole told me, "I could have built any green at my house and chose nylon. To maintain it, I just blow it off occasionally with a leaf blower."

A few years ago, I barely survived the agonizing process of having a swimming pool built in my yard. The end results were fine, but months of construction hassles and delays left me wary of letting another contractor into my yard with heavy equipment. Much to my relief, 48 hours after construction began on my new green, Jason and Michael were helping me finish my rock landscaping and cleaning up the mess.

Other than having played golf with Gary Poole, my final decision to build a backyard green was made after one of the highlights of my golfing life — a private putting lesson from two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw. (If you’re wondering how I arranged that, we are friends from our days at the University of Texas at Austin.) Widely considered to be one of the greatest putters in the history of the game, Crenshaw’s enthusiasm for the low-maintenance backyard greens was all the recommendation I needed.

"I love having an artificial green at home," Crenshaw told me. "It’s fun for me to try to get that right pace. That’s what I’m always looking for — the right pace. Every day, I just work on how hard I’m going to hit it."

So for the past few weeks, I’ve been out at my green every day, working on the pace of long putts and knocking in those three- and four-footers that I always used to miss. Having also purchased one of Callaway’s now-famous Two-Ball Putters, I can’t say how much of my putting improvement is because of the green and how much should be credited to the new putter. But I honestly can say that when I get out on a golf course, I feel confident — for the first time in my life — over every putt. The five or six three-putts I used to suffer every round have dropped to nearly zero and my score has dropped as well.

That’s everything I’d hoped for from my new green, but much to my surprise, game improvement has not been the best part of my backyard green. Nearly every evening when the sun goes down, my 8-year-old daughter heads to the practice green with me. Though she’d never shown any interest in golf before, she’s now putting and chipping with me till dark, falling in love with the game just as I did when I was her age.

On a recent evening, with dusk upon us and fireflies dancing all around, I felt like I was living in a dream.

"If we had better lights," she observed, "we could play longer."

Now I’m hoping for a round of golf with a lighting contractor.

Writer and actor Turk Pipkin is the author of a number of books, including the golf novel, Fast Greens. He also has appeared in HBO’s The Sopranos and can be seen in the movie, The Alamo.

WHO TO CALL
Putting Greens Direct
www.puttinggreensdirect.com
866.PGD.GOLF (866.743.4653)

SofTrak Putting Greens
www.unitedturf.com
877.MYGREEN (877.694.7336)