First Use of Multiple Tees??

[bm]

I had always thought that multiple tees really only came into popular use post RTJ.

I saw from the tread below on Muirfeild, that on the routing from 1928 multiple tees are shown on all the holes, some of them have up to 6 tees shown!!

Anyone out there know when the use of multiple tees first began and who began the practice? 1928 is a long time before I thought they came into being.

[TEPaul]

Don't know exactly when they were first used (certainly way before RTJ) but I do know that Flynn was the first or one of the first to use them to even out distance considerations for various levels of golfers. He was the one who first recommended that so-called "ladies tees" be called "forward tees" so short hitting men would be more inclined to use them without being embarassed or whatever.

Ross and probably many others used multiple tees for direction also (generally to take various wind directions into account). Probably the most famous Ross hole this way is #9 Gulf Stream (Fla.) The reason I say famous is clearly Ross was very proud of this short par 3 (and it's separated tees) which could vary the angle and direction a lot because he wrote about how good he thought the hole was and the varied directional tees was part of his reason. Thankfully Brain Silva restored the left tee (after being out of use for decades). The left tee is probably fifty yards left of the more used right ones.

But you can see that many of the old guy writers mentioned and used multiple tees as much for direction as distance considerations.

On the other hand (according to Ron Prichard), very early on Ross recommended only one set of tee markers (for everyone) and the only reason he recommended moving the markers was for wind conditions or reasons of seasonal wettness etc. In other words, if it took a women four normal shots to get to a green and a long man two shots--so be it!

[Lynn Shackelford]

Interesting that Flynn made the comments abouts calling the ladies' tees the forward tees.
In his book of stories, AWT endorses the idea of using tees which are wide for strategic reasons, but doesn't harp on different lengths.