A new word, from the front page of today's Wall Street Journal:

Green Too Fast? Blame the Stimpmeter
Stimpmeters
are an invention with a quixotic history and a profound -- some say pernicious -- impact on the game of golf, having led courses to groom their greens, where final putts often win and lose matches, to increasingly terrifying speeds.


The stimpmeter is a device that will roll a golf ball along the green at a precise initial speed. Thus the distance the ball travels measures how slick or "fast" the green is. That measure, becoming quantifiable, becomes the subject of competition among greenskeepers seeking to make their tournaments more difficult!