Malcolm,
You get it! Tim Martin and I played the Troy course on Monday the 30th and were mesmerized. There had been suggestions that Troy had a set of greens worth seeing. The rumors were factual. The greens were such that Tim and I probably took 4 hours to play the round, as we putted and putted and putted laterally, vertically and diagonally. We couldn't resist making up hole positions, to see how balls would react.
I remarked to Tim that it is so difficult to capture the true movement of a green, that the human eye is the greatest lens of all, or at least the one with the best interface to our human hard drive. It was when I reached home Monday evening and looked at the images, that I realized how fortunate I had been to capture in a communicable way some of the movement.
If one were to cut the greens to 11 stimp or so, balls would turn and roll out beyond appreciable anticipation. The staff understands this and had them running at a puttable grass height. Still, as the dew dried, we became much more cognizant of the threat of the putting surfaces. Troy plays like a mountain course, without the severe rises and drops that one finds in places like the Poconos, New England, the Catskills or the Smoky mountains. The greens therefore receive tremendous influence from the surrounding, irregular topography, in addition to their birthright at Travis' hands.
The super at Troy, Chris Strong, lurks around these parts (GCA) and may be reading as I type. He possesses an incredible wealth of knowledge and shared it with us generously and fearlessly. Monday was a slow day at Troy (they were punching the greens directly behind us) and he stopped by every 4-5 holes or so to check in, ask us our thoughts and answer questions/confirm suspicions.