Tom Dickman is evil.

Well, not really. But many of the amateur golfers playing in the Spirit of America golf tournament might think so by Sunday, the tournament’s final round.

Dickman, the superintendent at Burningtree Country Club, is trying to make his already fast-running greens even faster. By Sunday, he “hopes” to have the greens running at a 12 on the stemp meter.

In layman’s term, they’ll be — and are — fast.

“We are double-cutting every day,” Dickman said as he munched on a hot dog beside the Burningtree putting green Thursday during the Spirit’s opening round.

Players funneled off the golf course with nightmarish stories from the quick greens. And most of that can be attributed to them being double cut.

On average, the greens at Burningtree are cut once every morning and run somewhere between a 9 and 10 on the stemp meter — a device that measures green speed.

But for the Spirit, Dickman’s crew has been cutting the greens twice every morning. They also double-cut the greens for an entire week leading up to Thursday’s first round.

“The greens get a lot quicker this week,” said Decatur High senior-to-be Andrew Lowry, who finished with a 4-over-par 75. “The rough grows up a little bit.”

It actually doesn’t, according to Dickman.

“We made a decision two years ago that we are not going to change the rough for the tournament because it was so hard to get it back to our member-playing conditions,” Dickman said.

Some players, though, didn’t see it that way.

“The rough’s a little thick,” said Cason Hammock, who shot a 1-under-par 70.

Green speed isn’t the only thing that changes at Burningtree this week.

Hole No. 2 plays as a par 5 for the members, but not for the Spirit field. The 450-yard dogleg right was made a par 4 for this week.

“I didn’t like that hole,” said Hammock, who played in the Spirit last year. “I struggle on that hole, pretty much all the time.”

Said Lowry: “No. 2 is a beast.”

But it was the greens that dried out by the end of the day and were garnering much talk around the scorer’s tent.

Samford coach Woodie Eubanks hit his second shot onto No. 18’s green two feet past the cup: bad move. He missed the slippery downhill putt for birdie.

“I hit it 2 feet, and it broke 5,” Eubanks said with a wry smile.

At last year’s tournament, Dickman said, the greens were running at a 12 by Friday.

“Last year, we were thinking we might get even faster for Sunday,” Dickman said, “but we had rain.”

And, boy, did it rain. Some players had to finish their second round Saturday morning because of the Friday showers.

Players can only hope for a little rain this week to soften the hard greens. There’s a 60 percent chance of showers Friday and Saturday, according to Weather.com.

“You get a downhill, down-grain putt, it’s pretty quick,” said first-day leader Josh Oller. “You got to be careful.”