Matt - I'm mostly just giving you a hard time. No hard feelings, I trust.
That said...if your conception of "middle tees" means that from them you'd be enduring "a steady diet of 5-iron off tee and then flip wedge", how bloody far do you hit the ball? I don't think the middle tees are an average of 100 yards ahead of the back tees on any given hole, which is what you seem to be implying.
I still don't fully buy the argument about "playing the entire golf course". Every time you play a given hole, you usually only "play" on tiny segments of the hole - the spot your drive landed, the spot your second shot landed, and so on. "Playing the entire golf course" is, I believe, actually code for "facing the same hazards that (insert pro's name here) would if he was playing from the tips." Let me give you a stereotypical hole...a par 4, 430 from the tips, 400 from the middle tee. From the tips, a 250-yard carry with the driver might land in one of two fairway bunkers flanking the ideal landing area; from the middle tees, the carry (presuming that you hit your drive well enough to carry 250) doesn't have to worry about bunkers but does have a slightly narrower fairway to contend with. If you, the long hitter, play from the middle tee, you still have troubles to worry about - they just aren't the same troubles that the pro sees. By the same token, whether I (and my 210-yard carry off the tee, if I'm lucky) play the course from the middle or the back tees, I'm also not going to face the same trouble that the pro does, because I'm not long enough to reach it. I'll have my own troubles to contend with. And believe me, a steady diet of driver + long iron approach is a lot harder to live with than the 5-iron + flip wedge diet to which you refer (and yours is theoretical, whereas mine is a day-to-day reality).
But you know what? I play from the tees I'm asked to play at, and I deal with it. Which, incidentally, is exactly what every British golfer I've ever known does, even the very best of them. Nobody complains about being too long for a given golf course - they just go out and try to shoot the best score that they can. Honestly, if you really think that playing from the middle tees makes the game too boring for you, I'm sure you can find some ladies' golf balls or a persimmon driver to play with that will allow you to have your cake and eat it ,too.
There are *always* ways to hit the ball shorter; for those of us not blessed with the muscles and/or swing technique to hit the ball a long way, there isn't much we can do (in the present tense) to hit the ball longer.
As to the slow play argument - well, of course there are other ways to speed up play than force people to play from forward tees. Of course, other golfers will find those other remedies just as unacceptable as some of you find this one, which is in part why American golf is in the state it's in. Color me cynical! I'm merely suggesting that this is one way of doing it which might be easier to enforce than many others. Yes, slow play is a terrible disease. But are you willing enough to make a sacrifice of your own to help combat it? (FWIW, I have - I used to take two full practice swings before every shot I hit, now my pre-shot routine is down to one semi-waggle and a quick look at my line from behind the ball.)
Mike - sorry if your initial thread has been hijacked. It happens.
I agree with all of your other sentiments about multiple tees as well, as it happens. The really awful thing in my mind is trying to squeeze the scorecard from one of these courses with six sets of tees in your back pocket - it won't fit, because in having to display six sets of yardages on the card they have to blow it up 150 or 200 percent! And to have six sets of tees you have to have six different colors, which is another pet peeve - it used to be that you had red tees up front, white tees in the middle, blue tees in the back and possibly a yellow/gold set of championship tees, but now I see any number of courses with tee designations well removed from primary colors or, worse, tees not named after colors at all, so that you have to remember that you're playing from the "Nicklaus" tees or the "Shakespeare" tees or who-knows-what-else. Yuck.
Cheers,
Darren