ESPN Golf

ATLANTA -- For those who play their golf on torn-up muni courses and would like to see how the world's best players fare under such conditions, for those who want to see more left to chance at this week's Tour Championship, for those who seek a little schadenfreude from their weekend TV viewing, we have bad news.

The greens are green.

Despite a full week of estimations and conjecture about exactly how East Lake Golf Club's putting surfaces would look, the final answer just two days before the final FedEx Cup event is that they'll roll slower than usual but won't be nearly as inconsistent as first believed.

"I think the greens will be rolling about 9 to 9½, and we're not going to press them too much on the speed," said PGA Tour tournament director Mark Russell, who guessed they were an 11 or 12 on the Stimpmeter at last year's Tour Championship. "We're just going to play it by ear day by day, but I don't think they're going to get much faster than that."

"The greens are 10 times better than what the tour told us they were going to have," Mark Calcavecchia said. "From what I heard, I think that might have been kind of a plan so nobody would be completely in a state of shock when they got here. The greens are going to be fine, honestly. Some of them don't look so good and there's some bare spots on them, but they putt very nice. They're closer to good than they are bad, let's put it that way."

The reason for the poor greens is, simply, Mother Nature. The tournament was moved up two months, from November to September, causing adverse results from the creeping bent grass, which generally grows better in cooler climates.

It was originally announced on Sunday that due to an unusually hot, dry summer that had baked these greens, no practice rounds or pro-ams would take place, with players getting their first look at them during Thursday's opening round. Though the pro-ams remain canceled, this week's competitors were allowed full use of the course, save for the greens at Nos. 2, 13 and 15, which are in worse condition than the others.

Such travails have left plenty to the imagination over the past week. Just how bad are the greens? A 6-inch crater here? A worm-infested fringe there? Grass so brown it makes any British Open venue look like a rain forest? No, no and no; in fact, they're in better condition than most of the greens used in early-season PGA Tour events on the West Coast.

"Obviously, there was a little overexaggeration to the extent of the damage to the greens," said Rory Sabbatini, who remains one of five players with a chance to win the FedEx Cup. "I don't think it's as bad as everyone thought it was going to be. Obviously, they were just wanting to prepare us and be [cautious] about the whole situation. Other than them just being a little slower than traditional out here, there's obviously some patches on the greens where you can see the distressing of them. But all things considered, they're still rolling well."

And they're only getting better. From July 30 through Aug. 23, there was no rain in this section of Georgia, a drought spanning more than three weeks. In the following week, 2.75 inches of precipitation fell, but that was followed by nary a droplet over the first 10 days of September. On Tuesday, afternoon storms brought some much-needed rain and could be followed by more showers later in the week. According to a statement released by the PGA Tour, "The weather forecast calls for possible rain and thunderstorms [mainly afternoon] through Friday evening and lingering into Saturday morning."

Like the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. Or so they hope at the Tour Championship.

Jason Sobel is ESPN.com's golf editor. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn3.com