The green and everything designed around it, treated as a single unit — the putting surface plus its bunkers, false fronts, runoffs, collection areas, and surrounding slopes. Architects think in complexes, not greens, because the ground around a putting surface decides how the hole actually plays: a flat green ringed by pot bunkers and shaved banks defends par harder than a wildly contoured one sitting in open ground. When reviewers praise a course's green complexes, they mean this whole system — how the surrounds dictate where you dare to miss, not just how the putts break.