Tees for Women: What Are We Supposed To Conclude?

[Daryl David]

The idea of a forward tee is that the shorter player should hit a similar club for their second shot.  If a par 4 for me is something like 400 yards and thus requires a drive and 7 iron, then my wife needs a distance that gets her within 110 yards of the green.  That would be about 280/290 for the forward tee.

Not many courses have forward tees set up in that fashion.  The ones that are, provide a great golfing experience for the shorter hitter provided there is thought to tee placement and strategy.

[MargaretC]

My wife is about to give the game up.  Why?  She hits the ball pretty well before she grabs her three wood on EVERY par 4 and goes for the green, after which she grabs her wedge and the fun really begins.

How many of us would still find enjoyment in the game if this were the case?

Interestingly, the Green committee is now attempting to identify some shorter tees to help out on some holes.  There has been resistance to this change.  From whom you ask?  The very women it would help are thinking this is some kind of unfair advantage. 

Sometimes you just scratch your head.

WHC:

I suggest that you make a copy of the article that Tyler posted earlier on this thread and give it to your wife to read.  I took several copies to work with me this am and many of the women who read it seemed to appreciate the manner in which it is presented.  One told me that she is now re-thinking her position and is going to give a cc of the article to the Chair of the Greens Committee at her club.

My bad, but I had always assumed that data, like the data presented in the article, was used in determining the placement of red tees.  After reading the article, it appears that the decision in determining yardage for the forward tees has, oftentimes, been more arbitrary for whatever reason.

For a multitude of reasons (right or wrong), the knee-jerk reaction of some women is to resist and/or be suspect of any proposed changes to the status quo based on gender.  I've been there and I've done that on occasion.    My husband will typically say, Okay, Helen Reddy, I hear you roar!    IMO, the way the information is presented in the article could go a long way in "calming" the Helen Reddy that lurks beneath the surface of some of us women.

Meg

[Ken Moum]

For the women who hit it relativly long and complain about driver being taken out of thier hand, why not just play back 1 set of tees on those holes?

I've played with a few women over the years who played from the same set of whites as us and they kept up pretty well.

If you delve a bit deeper, I bet that's not reallly the complaint. I bet it's as I suggested, they are forced to lay up, then are left with too-long shot to the green.

As a male, imagine playing a tight, tree-lined dogleg par four of 455 yards, where the design of the hole forced you to hit 7 iron off the tee.

So your only reasonable play would be 7 iron, three wood, wedge.

It can happen pretty easily when you move the forward tees up on an old-style golf course.

We have one on our old Ross course, and there's no way to fix it. It's 385 from the whites, 302 from the reds, and the ideal spot for your drive is ~140 yards from the green.  Hit it too far and it can trickle onto a steep downslope covered with rough.

With the prevailing wind, firm fairways, my wife has to be careful about hitting it too far off the tee. But then she's left with a three wood or five wood off a hanging lie.

It's her least-favorite hole on the course.

K

[Jason McNamara]

We have one on our old Ross course, and there's no way to fix it. It's 385 from the whites, 302 from the reds, and the ideal spot for your drive is ~140 yards from the green.  Hit it too far and it can trickle onto a steep downslope covered with rough.

With the prevailing wind, firm fairways, my wife has to be careful about hitting it too far off the tee. But then she's left with a three wood or five wood off a hanging lie.

It's her least-favorite hole on the course.

Suggestion: move the red tee back even with the whites (or blues), but play it as a par 5.

[Ken Moum]

We have one on our old Ross course, and there's no way to fix it. It's 385 from the whites, 302 from the reds, and the ideal spot for your drive is ~140 yards from the green.  Hit it too far and it can trickle onto a steep downslope covered with rough.

With the prevailing wind, firm fairways, my wife has to be careful about hitting it too far off the tee. But then she's left with a three wood or five wood off a hanging lie.

It's her least-favorite hole on the course.

Suggestion: move the red tee back even with the whites (or blues), but play it as a par 5.

That would only make things worse.

The downslope into the valley starts at about 150 yards from the green.  Even if you could get to 401 to make it a par five, more than 90 percent of the women would be hitting a short club to lay up. But they'd still be  so far from the green they couldn't reach it in three.

The valley is ~70 yards wide, with about 50 yards of rough. The downslope starts at about 150, and turns to rough at 125 or 130. The fairway starts again about 80 yards from the green.

There aren't more than an handful of women at our club who can reliably A) hit a fairway shot 150 yards, or B) hit it 130 off a downhill/sidhill lie.

The fact is, as Alice Dye has pointed out, the hole was probably perfectly reasonble before water fairways. Our course was opened in 1915, and Ross probably did his thing in 1921. Back then, an average woman player could hit a low shot that ran up on the green.

That's no longer an option.

The simple fact is that cross hazards that occupy the 100- to 140-yard distance make it almost impossible for even above average women to play the hole as it was intended.

K

[Jason McNamara]

Well, scratch that idea. 

How about a slightly built-up tee box for a 150-yd par 3?  Still not an easy hole, but maybe avoids the double-whammy.  But yeah, I definitely see your point now.

[Ken Moum]

Well, scratch that idea. 

How about a slightly built-up tee box for a 150-yd par 3?  Still not an easy hole, but maybe avoids the double-whammy.  But yeah, I definitely see your point now.

I haven't talked to my wife about solutions much but she's suggested that mowing the rough in this particular valley would at least give her a chance at a 100- to 120-yard second from the bottom if she hit a very good drive.

Doing that would probably have have the middle-level men up in arms because the better players now have to take a pretty big risk to cut the corner--the bottom of the valley is just where they'd aim, given a choice.

And, although it would sort of solve this hole's problem for women, it doesn't work where the cross hazard is a pond or rough arroyo.

Ken