The post-Masters buzz, minus some musing about Tiger’s return, was all about 15-inch holes.

It was HackGolf’s first initiative, a way to infuse a little more fun into the game and, hey, what’s not amusing about watching Sergio Garcia putting into a bucket-sized hole.

Unfortunately, it missed a larger point.

It is not hole size, but rather our obsession with perfect putting surfaces and double-digit green speeds — even for casual play — that’s the issue.

Our demand for fast and “fair” putting surfaces has added time, increased cost and actually corrupted the process of playing the game, say some of the game’s brightest minds. Remember when golf had a nice hit-walk-hit-repeat flow? Now insert a 15-minute meeting in the middle of it — that’s putting — and you have modern golf. We’ve upset the balance of a game that had perfect balance. We putt with crankshafts and make strokes so tentative and fearful our playing companions want to yell, “It’s good! Let’s go!”

“All you need to know about green speeds,” says Geoff Shackelford, an expert on golf course architecture and an architect himself, “is when the anchoring debate took place, it was largely an American issue because we push the boundaries of common sense with green speeds. Sure, there are exceptions in Europe and Asia, but for the most part this is an American obsession that we are sadly trying to export. And all it does it raise cost, expense, stress and does not add enjoyment to the game.”

Fast greens are fun to putt, but they are, as Shackelford points out, a costly luxury, costly in so many ways.

Let’s start with pace of play, which the 15-inch hole took aim at. Dr. Lou Riccio, Columbia professor and author of “Golf’s Slow Play Bible,” estimates that every foot green speed adds 10 and possibly 15 minutes to a round.

“Of all the things related to the course which can be adjusted, green speeds are very important to pace,” he says.

He’s being conservative, especially for amateurs struggling with speeds of 11 to 13. I can still remember the day we played the stroke-play club championship qualifier on surfaces running between 12 and 13. It took an hour longer than our usual rounds on greens of 9 or 10.

Al Radko, the former USGA Green Section director once said, “No matter where the golfer is putting from, it should be possible to stop the ball within 2 feet of the hole.” That sounds easy, but on greens of 11, 12 or 13, it’s rare that weekend players can do it. Instead of tap-ins, he or she must take time to line up that second (and often third) putt… tick, tick, tick… and then dramatize the miss. Fear of three-putting then infects pitches and chips to such greens, requiring more “planning.”

“How could the chase for double-digit Stimpmeter speeds do anything but slow the game down and give people the yips?” Shackelford says. “Plus, there’s the complete lack of fun in modern greens, which have to be built flatter for this silly pursuit of marble-like surfaces.”

The cost of ultra-fast greens, in dollars and environmental damage, is outrageous. Since the 1970s, average green speeds have increased more than 50 percent. Mowing heights have dropped by half.

“Consistently keeping greens at tournament speeds has costs that few golf courses have the resources to deal with or consequences that golfers will tolerate,” warned a Wisconsin study in 2002.

That advice went largely unheeded.

“If you compare [fast greens] with human beings,” advises the Golf Course Superintendents Association (GCSAA), “it would be fair to say that their immune systems can be very weak. They become susceptible to diseases and pests, and therefore may require more chemical treatments. Weather can also quickly destroy the health of an ultrafast green. High temperatures and lack of moisture in the air are deadly to greens that are maintained at very short cutting heights for any length of time.”

Our Connecticut club’s superintendent, who has successfully prepared a strong Tillinghast course for four USGA championships over three decades, takes enormous grief when he depresses green speeds during difficult growing conditions. But he’s avoided what four nearby clubs have suffered in the past five years: complete loss of their putting surfaces.

This obsession with speed has even warped the way evaluate courses. Without slick greens, good courses get poor reputations while profligate ones, expending water and chemicals at will, often become models to emulate. First question I got after playing one 100 Greatest course: “How many 3-putts did you have?” The questioner added proudly that when the tour played the course they slowed the greens down.

On the PGA Tour, putting is so important it’s fooled us about what we’re watching. When Rickie Fowler finished in the top 5 at the Masters this year, writers were quick to credit Fowler’s recent move to Butch Harmon. Harmon’s great for sure, but Fowler led the field in putting at 1.5 putts per hole. He hit slightly more than half of his greens in regulation.

Tragically — and that’s the word for it — our obsession with perfectly fast putting surfaces has not only wasted water and added pesticides, it’s blown a small fortune, which we pass on to the golfer. If the game needs a new rallying cry it’s not “15-inch holes.” It’s “9 is Fine” on the Stimpmeter.

“The saddest part of all this?” Shackelford says. “Good players struggle on slow greens. So the more courses speed things up, the more it hurts the average golfers and helps the elite player. What a needless mess!

So: Cost. Pace of Play. Difficulty. Environmental concerns. Equipment regulation. Rules debates. The sport’s big issues.

What one aspect of golf is intricately involved with each? Yep, greens.