Generally, with older courses, greens may have been much larger at one time. Where practicable, it may make good sense to bring some of these areas back as putting surfaces. This can often be accomplished over time by cutting down, aerifying, slit seeding, topdressing and rolling collar areas, while areas outside of collars, (depending on the green) may need to be striped, graded/tied-in, floated and re-sodded. When vintage courses were built, often consisting of "push-up" construction methods, green speeds were much slower than the demands of today for true, firm, smooth and fast greens. Often greens may offer very few real or fair pin areas given the size, pitch or slope of these surfaces. This means there may be little variety in course set-up and compaction is concentrated within high traffic areas.

Often older greens have less than perfect soil conditions by nature of their original construction. This condition may be modified over time, based on soils tests, but there are occasions when entire green complexes may need to be rebuilt. A full review of green conditions and their surrounding interrelated mounds, hollows, swales and bunkers would be part of a Master Planning process.

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