They might be able to remove the East Lake greens from the endangered list.

The heat-stressed bent grass has responded to treatment from East Lake superintendent Ralph Kepple's staff to the point that the PGA Tour will now allow restricted practice rounds on the eve of the Tour Championship, which begins Thursday.

Renee' Hannans Henry / AJC (ENLARGE)

Peter Avent, a native of Scotland and a University of Ohio grad in turf management, takes a hose to the No. 8 green.

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Competitors won't be allowed to play three holes today and Wednesday: No. 2, No. 13 and No. 15. Other holes can be played as usual. The course will remain closed to spectators until Thursday.

On Sunday, the PGA Tour announced it had canceled all practice rounds and Wednesday's pro-am.

"We're not worried about speed, we're only worried about playability," said Kepple, whose 27 employees have been working to get the course ready for this week's FedEx Cup finale.

"We're talking about 3-1/2 acres of the 200 acres on the property. About 95 percent of the property is perfect, but all people are going to be doing is talking about the greens."

From a distance the East Lake greens look fine. There are no brown patches. However, a close look reveals places on the greens, especially around the edges, that have thin or no grass. The condition would provide for a bumpy putt. The greens haven't been painted, although the sand and seed are dyed green so crews can see which areas have been treated.

"You don't want to say this, but it's true," Tiger Woods said. "You're going to have to accept missing a bunch of putts. It is what it's going to be. Just like sometimes when you play Pebble Beach or Spyglass, you hit good putts from two feet and they just don't go in."

Trouble began in early August. After a cooler, wet July, the temperatures soared in August and never relented. To exacerbate matters, there were few breezes and the temperatures at night stayed in the 80s, offering the grass little chance to recover.

"It really was the perfect storm," said Ken Mangum, superintendent at the Atlanta Athletic Club, which will host the 2011 PGA Championship. "Bent grass was not meant for these temperatures. It would be like trying to keep your pansies alive all summer. You can't do it."

Richard Duble, a professor at Texas A&M and noted turfgrass specialist, said, "It's not anybody's fault. It's just that that grass is not adapted to that kind of climate."

Kepple said the greens, which will be replaced with Bermuda before the next year's Tour Championship, have responded since member play ended 10 days ago. His crew has been seeding and filling in the thin areas, put down sand, and sodded around the edges where the damage is more severe. They began mowing greens every other day, only recently getting back to a daily pattern. Large fans have been placed around many greens to help air movement. Five workers are assigned to do nothing but rotate around the course, spraying a mist of water on the surface to cool the greens.

"We've done everything we can do," Kepple said. "It's not going to be as bad as everybody thinks."

It's not the first time major tournaments have competed on questionable greens. Steve Elkington won the 1995 PGA Championship at Riviera Country Club, which barely had any grass. Robert Allenby said he won the 1996 British Masters on a Collingtree Park course in England that lost its greens, then rolled them and spray painted them for the competition.

Russ Myers, the superintendent at Southern Hills in Tulsa, just finished hosting the PGA Championship. His club's greens held up through a week of 100-degree weather during the tournament.

"I'd say two weeks after the event here, our greens were probably at their weakest that they had been all summer." Myers said. "It just so happened to coincide with a longer stretch of a lack of rain."

Most courses in the area have had some problems with their bent grass greens, although East Lake's has received more scrutiny because of the Tour Championship. Other superintendents say East Lake is in a tougher spot because it's closer to the city and retains more heat, and that the course has less air movement because of the mature trees on the course.

Comparing East Lake to other courses isn't fair, Mangum said.

"You've always got people who want to point fingers," he said. "Everybody loves to compare, but most people aren't willing to be open to a real comparison. They've done everything they can out there."

— Staff writer Thomas Stinson contributed to this story.