Creeping up, why do clubs do it ?

[Tom Huckaby]

Bryan:

Not all associations provide permanent rating monuments. Some provide them as part of the rating process, andsome sell them to raise money, but I believe most do neither.

Most US associations are small (<100 clubs or 30,000 individual members, <500,000 annual revenues) and that makes it nearly impossible for them to have monument programs.

Well there we have it.  Seems as it it's just a function of larger associations, and ours is huge.  I just do recall surely seeing them elsewhere in these great United States than just California...

Jim, what would you guess is the percentage of courses nationwide that have them and that don't, among courses with ratings?

[Scott_Burroughs]

Patrick,

On courses in the South where golf is played year-round and all rounds (including winter) are counted towards handicap calulcations, here is an explanation from the Carolinas Golf Association web site:

Do your golf scores go up during the winter months?

They shouldn’t, really, because of weather conditions.  

The USGA says clubs are supposed to set up courses to make scoring constant throughout the year.  This is covered in Section 15 (Course Set-up) of the USGA Handicap System manual.

“Placement of tee markers should be balanced so that the course’s effective playing length is about the same from day to day.  Adjustments may be made to allow for weather and turf conditions.”

So, if your course “plays” longer in the winter months, your club should instruct the maintenance department to set up tees (on average) shorter than they are in the summer months.  Move them up.  Make the course “play” in February as it does in July.

The same is true of hole locations.  If your greens are faster in the winter than in the summer, then the maintenance staff should cut holes on flatter areas during the winter months.

The goal is to allow you to score as well in the coming months as you did last summer.

Read Section 15 of the USGA handicap manual at www.usga.org, under Playing the Game.

[Tom_Doak]

Patrick:

Many years ago, Pete Dye told me the only way to get the average golfer to play the set of tees he should play was to lie about the yardage.

Essentially, that's the phenomenon you describe.  The white tees at course X are listed on the card at 6400 yards and rated that way, but the club moves the tees up to 6000 to get the golfers around faster and feeling better about their games.

[JohnV]

et. al.,

Aren't golf courses rated from the OFFICIAL marker designated by the Association the conducts the rating.

In the Metropolitan New York area, the MGA (Metropolitan Golf Association) conducts that process and establishes the location from where the golf course is rated by placing permanent markers in the ground.

Everything works off of those fixed points.

It doesn't matter where the tee markers are placed on any given day as the golf course is not rated from tee markers, but from permanent fixed plaques/points.

Not necessarily.  The plates are not there to show where the course was rated from, but to show where the measurements were taken.

They are measured from those points, but the rating team can decide to rate from a different point if it obvious that they are not playing from that point.  If we do rate from a different point, we would measure the difference precisely and add or subtract the difference in yards.

Brian,  Using the USGA table for playing from a set of unrated tees, 180 yards would be 1.0 shots off the course rating and 2 slope points.

While not every hole has a monument, there needs to be a good record of where the measurement of the hole was made.  For example, we might measure everything from the back edge of the tee pad or the middle or next to the yardage sign the club puts or at the front of the steps that lead up from the cart path, but when we do that, we would also record that with the measurement so that we could know.

We provide one set of plates at no charge to any member course that has 30 more members (or will pay us for 30).  We will sell them any additional sets at our cost which is about $450 a set.  When we measure a course, we will paint an X on the ground where we measured from and the superintendent will set the plate at that point some time later.

We consult with the club management, officials or just the superintendent as to where they want them measured from.  More clubs want the measurements from 4 paces off the back of the tee these days to maximize yardage.  If that were the case we would do it and put the plate there, but as I said before, we probably would rate from a shorter distance.

[Tom Huckaby]

JV:

Many thanks, as always.  Off-season still and the mind does wander.  I do remember rating from places other than the plates... it happened at some stupid courses where for whatever reason the plates were five steps behind the back of the back tee, stuff like that.  We have such things out here.  

TH

[Kalen Braley]

This is interesting to hear.

Locally here in Utah, I've been rather alarmed at how many par 3 holes don't have any plates on them.  When I saw it on the first course I played, I just thought it was an odd omission.  But after having played several other courses, I've found it is the rule and not the exception.

As this wouldn't matter so much on the par 4s or 5s, on the par 3s it can lead to some interesting guess work which has led to at least one occasion of air-mailing a green and going OB.  

I guess I need to get in touch with the UGA and see what the story is on that one.

[JohnV]

Patrick:

Many years ago, Pete Dye told me the only way to get the average golfer to play the set of tees he should play was to lie about the yardage.

I know of two courses in Oregon that will go nameless that definitely lied about their yardages.  

At one, all the par 4s and 5s were about 20 to 30 yards shorter than the tee markers and score cards said.  Everyone just thought there were really killing the ball that day.

At the other, the final 9 to be built seemed too short for management so they added 10 yards to all the 4s & 5s and 5 yards to the par 3s.  Since these holes were interspersed with the original 9, you had to know which holes were newer to know when the yardages were off.  It doesn't matter much on a 4 or a 5, but on a par 3 it could make a difference.

PS, neither of these courses are part of multi-course complexes so don't guess any of them (and I won't tell anyway.)

[Tom Huckaby]

We have a poster course for lying about yardage right here in the good ole Bay Area.  Frequent readers might recall me discussing it before.  It's called THE RANCH AT SILVER CREEK.  San Jose, CA.

Here's their scorecard....

http://www.theranchgc.com/scorecard.php

Note those black tees measuring to 6747.

Here are the measurements done by the NCGA:

Men
Black               72        72.9     152      6372
Blue                 72        71.3     147      5956
White               70        68.9     139      5391

The 6747 tees listed on the scorecard are completely fictitious.  It's actually kinda comical - on several par threes, signs are posted giving the real yardage, so players don't get fooled by the card.  One particularly doozie backs up to a cliff, with maximum yardage before falling into space 130 or so... yet there's a 157 marking on the card....

Sigh.  This is indeed one of the many reasons I hate this golf course.  But haven't I mentioned this at least a dozen times before?

 

[Bryan Izatt]

Tom,

I thought it might have been more the walkability of the course you found attractive.  Love those switchback cart paths.

As to the distance, it's not so fictitious that a little measuring from the back edge of the tees to the outside edge of doglegs and 15 yards past the centre of the green can't account for it.  

[JohnV]

I should note that some courses have plans to build tees that have never been built and they put those yardages on their score card.  But from what Tom says, it sounds like that par 3 is not one of them.  Maybe they are planning on moving the green some day.

This is exactly the reason that associations measure the course themselves (as the USGA requires).  Some courses will measure from the back to the tee to the back of the green.

[Doug Siebert]

Patrick:

Yes, ratings are done from the "monument" markers, and I've have to assume it's the same nationwide.  We certainly do that in the NCGA.  John V. described the process.

As for why clubs creep up, I think Rich nailed it.  But just think of it this way - if they do so on a constant basis, they are achieving at least slightly artificially low handicaps.  So just bet heavily against people from these clubs!

TH

What about the majority of courses that don't have monument markers for each tee?  Do they choose a sprinkler head in the area and say that's the monument?  Do they choose the stone markers that show the map of the hole and yardages?  If there's only one "monument" on a given hole, and multiple sets of tees, do they have yardage offsets from that monument?

The great majority of courses over 10-20 years old don't have any sort of yardage markers on the teeboxes of the par 4s and 5s.  Most golfers don't really care if it is 406 or 425 yards to the center of the green on a par 4, though it may matter if they are 100 yards closer.  But you gotta have some sort of marker on a par 3 or people will be very unhappy.

[Tom Huckaby]

Bryan - well, no slave to walking am I... I prefer to walk, but I also ride all the time.  But I must say I have used this course also as the I DARE YOU example for the militant walkers in this forum.  That is, oh sure, it COULD be walked, any course CAN BE... I just dare you to try.  I'll ride and be finished with 18 before the walker gets done with the 12th hole.     And good call re creative measurement techniques.

JV - yeah, I can't see that these distances at THE RANCH come from tees yet to be built, but on some holes I suppose that is possible.  On the par three I mention, it would require suspending a new back tee in mid-air 50 feet above a main road.  

Doug - I too am at a loss for what courses without monuments do - how do people know from what point the stated distance starts?  Like you say, this is no big deal really on holes other than par3s... but on par3s one does tend to want a distance frame of reference...

TH

[Mike Hendren]

Huck,

OT, but:  Get in the *%#@ car, man.

Mike

[Tom Huckaby]

Huck,

OT, but:  Get in the *%#@ car, man.

Mike

Michael:  oh, we shall be - wheels up at noon.