Playoff Fever: Plainfield! Plainfield! Plainfield!

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Let's be honest, no one cares about the playoffs unless points resets are your thing, which is why we at least have our Fantasy League (with prizes from Avis and Callaway!) to keep us company. Two top players are limping in if they're playing at all (Hank Gola reports), Rory McIlroy is sitting out the first round and it'll be tough to top the 2015 majors.

But we have Plainfield for this week's first playoff event, The Barclays! This means two weeks in a row of Donald Ross designs, and as we saw last week at Sedgefield, there is something about those green complexes, the strategy and the intimate scale of the old style venues that makes for great tournament energy.

In 2011, Plainfield was soft from a wet summer and then was made even more forgettable by Hurricane Sandy.

This time around, the course is said to be in amazing shape by the PGA Tour's advance staff, the hurricane's are staying away and this Donald Ross masterwork should be a lot of fun to watch this week.

Ran Morrissett's Golf Club Atlas review is several years old but he makes the key point that this is one very special use of a property with more standout Ross holes than just about any course he created.

Gil Hanse has overseen restoration work here, with more tweaks in advance of this year's event at holes 15 and 16, as Tripp Isenhour reveals in this video report. The 18th will be driveable again, as Isenhour explained in this Golf Central report.

Coverage begins Thursday on Golf Channel at 2 pm ET, but those who've signed up to the PGA Tour's streaming option can start soaking up playoff tension at 8 am ET.

Photos: Olympic Golf Course Looking Like A Golf Course

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Nice set of aerials Tweeted by the International Golf Federation account showing the Rio 2016 golf course growing in nicely one year out from the Games.

You can check them out at this link and enlarge each a bit.

Most encouraging here is that the native areas look decent, meaning a year from now they have the chance to have taken on a maturity that will look better.

Green Speeds And Pace Of Play, Gullane Edition

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Out watching Scottish Open opening day play, an odd thing happened: players routinely putted out 3-4 footers. The overall pace seemed brisk, but relaxed.

Case in point: the group of Fowler, Donaldson and Poulter were at the 17th green. Both Donaldson and Fowler hit mediocre first putts, leaving 3-4 footers for par. Both briefly marked their ball, repositioned for alignment, then putted out.

This is hardly unique in the annals of golf, particularly on links. Except that such putting-out rarely happens any more due to professional event green speeds consistently in the Stimpmeter 12-foot range.

The green speeds at Gullane for round one? According to the European Tour course setup "table": 10 feet, 3 inches.

The "time par" for day one threesomes at Gullane was 4:20. That's about what it took the faster twosomes to get around Chambers Bay this year.

According to the European Tour's charts of player pace for round one, groups played in the 4:28 to 4:48 pace, with the final two threesomes of the day taking a very respectable 4:48. And that's with a few long walks between greens and tees, along with enough breeze to make things interesting (and some rough too).

The moral of the story? Green speeds impact pace of play, not to mention what they do for maintenance cost and architectural integrity.

Video: Taking Your Golf Pilgrimage To East Lothian

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Two years ago I filed this piece for Golf Digest about the importance of making East Lothian ("Scotland's Golf Coast") the sight of your golf pilgrimage. Not only does the area afford several of the most important places that shaped the game's history, but the opportunity to set up shop in one general area to enjoy a more centrally located golf vacation beckons.

After playing Glen Golf Club this evening (aka North Berwick East Links), I'm more convinced than ever that this is the planet's most idyllic place to experience the links game at its purest and most diversified. What a perfect, breathtaking and endearingly bizarre set of holes. (More on Glen tomorrow).

In the meantime, here's an UnShackled video to encapsulate my feelings for this special place. Check it out...