Seven Tee boxes?

[Sean_A]

Was just looking at the scorecard for Cog Hill #4 post Dr. Jones reno.  They have six tees, as well as a combo! :

Black 7554
Gold 7144
Blue 6750
Blue/White 6564
White 6382
Green 6033
Forward 5441

Is this what we've come to? I guess so..........

This is not an encouraging advert for me.  Seven tee boxes - fine, but make the angles of play at least as important as the yardage.  I am never gonna buy that creating 5, 6, 7 tee areas based on yardage is ever gonna make a course good or playable for all.  Its one of the biggest scams of the past 25 years. 

Ciao

[Garland Bayley]

...I am never gonna buy that creating 5, 6, 7 tee areas based on yardage is ever gonna make a course good or playable for all.  Its one of the biggest scams of the past 25 years. 

Ciao

Sean,

You and I are in complete accord on this. Adding tee boxes adds expense, adds playing time, adds needless walking when one could be playing, increases the desire to use carts, etc. So what if you can shoot 88 playing from the forward tees. Turn in your score cards and you get your handicap of perhaps 27? So what are you going to do run around bragging about your 88 until someone figures out the course rating was 61 for you?

[Carl Johnson]

By way of back ground, my club's course has four sets of tee markers on each hole.  The holes have 3, 4 or, in at least one case, 5 separate rectangular tees.  The card shows five sets of tee markers, black (7011), blue, white, green (5253) and a black/blue mixed set.  In addition we added a mixed green/white set and a mixed blue/white set, initially for senior inter-club league play, which are also sloped and rated and so anyone can play them as complete courses.  Several observations.

In setting up the combinations for the senior league play the focus was not so much on the overall length of a particular hole, or the length of the course as a whole, but rather on getting some of the seniors (who don't hit the ball very far) off the tee and into the fairway.  Thus, we chose the more forward tees,  even on at least one very short hole, where we felt necessary to make sure everyone could get his drive over forced carries, up hills, and past the dogleg corners.

Second, I like the idea of playing from different tees from time to time for variety.  I'd like to see some of my long-hitting buddies go from the shortest tees on certain holes, because those tees will bring hazards potentially into play (off the tee) that they don't normally have to deal with.  As a short-hitter, I'd like to play some of the long par 4s from the very back tees from time to time, turning them into real par 5s for me.  The difficulty with making up hodge podge courses like this when playing for fun is that, as I understand it, you must post your score as played from the entire set of tees for the course from the longest tee (e.g., black in our case) from which you played, which has the potential to artificially lower your handicap.  A solution would be to publish the slope and rating for each hole, and then let the golfers calculate the total for various tee markers from which they played.  The difficulty, of course, is that this approach is just not practical under the USGA handicap reporting system as it is set up today.

Finally, from an architectural standpoint, I think I've learned that you cannot make all of the hazards play the same way (come into play) from different tees, so you design the course essentially for one set of tees (the longest?), and then let the balls fall where they may when play is from shorter tees.  Some might use this as an argument against having multiple sets of tees, but as a practical matter I don't see any other choice for the club/course that wants to be playable by a wide range of golfers.

[Garland Bayley]

...as I understand it, you must post your score as played from the entire set of tees for the course from the longest tee (e.g., black in our case) from which you played, which has the potential to artificially lower your handicap.  A solution would be to publish the slope and rating for each hole, and then let the golfers calculate the total for various tee markers from which they played.  The difficulty, of course, is that this approach is just not practical under the USGA handicap reporting system as it is set up today...

You understand wrong. The USGA publishes a table to modify rating and slope by yardage. Just calculate the extra, or fewer yards you played from the yards for the tees you most commonly played. Then enter your score using rating and slope just like you would for a course not in your system where you enter your scores.

[PThomas]

...However, there should NOT be a set of tees measuring 4500 yards on a golf course like Dubsdread. If you want to bring a beginning golfer to the course, there are two other courses -- of the four on site -- that you should do so. Not only would your junior/senior/not very good woman player have a difficult time, but the fee is $155. Most of the greens require the player to approach over a bunker. A player like my mother -- who I love to play golf with, just not at a course like Dubs -- would spend the day trying to get balls out of deep greenside bunkers. Not fun for them. . . or the group(s) playing behind them.

I would have to concurr with this.  Cog Hill is a multi-course facility and has courses that range from straight-forward to Dubs. (I tend to favor #3).  Jemsek is very in-tune with what the customer wants and strives to give it to him.  But, along with playability comes speed of play and those shelling out $155 aren't too keen on little Johnny bunting it around just because Dad can afford it.  Let's face it, not all courses can or should strive to be all things to all people.  Golfers should Read the tees.  On Dubs, they say "if you can't play from here, this is not a course for you, please try one of our other offerings".

point well taken/pardon my brain cramp:  forgot we were talking about Dubs, where high handicappers probably shouldnt be

[Andrew Summerell]

Ron also reminds that we do not have a term in golf known as "green complexes." What we have is the "green" that is the whole of the golf course----eg hence a "greenkeeper."

 

Could you text Ron to tell him we don’t have ‘Greenkeepers’ anymore, we have ‘Superintendents’.   

[Carl Johnson]

...as I understand it, you must post your score as played from the entire set of tees for the course from the longest tee (e.g., black in our case) from which you played, which has the potential to artificially lower your handicap.  A solution would be to publish the slope and rating for each hole, and then let the golfers calculate the total for various tee markers from which they played.  The difficulty, of course, is that this approach is just not practical under the USGA handicap reporting system as it is set up today...

You understand wrong. The USGA publishes a table to modify rating and slope by yardage. Just calculate the extra, or fewer yards you played from the yards for the tees you most commonly played. Then enter your score using rating and slope just like you would for a course not in your system where you enter your scores.

Thanks, Garland.  I looked up the rule you referred to and it is 5.2g in the Handicap Manual.  The basic rule is for unrated tees on a course that has rated tees, but 5.2g goes on to say: "This method may also be used if a player plays a combination of tees. The player first determines the total yardage played then applies the above procedure."  Presumably this means "a combination of [rated] tees."  That's the case I was thinking about.  I'm not entirely sure how to determine the appropriate "most commonly" played tees in that situation, assuming that's the baseline, which the wording seems to suggest.  I suppose if you had a plurality of tees, say you played five green, five white and eight blue, you'd key of the blue tees as most commonly played.  If you played from five green, seven white, three blue and three black, then you'd key off the white tees.  Do you think this is what the rules would call for?  If you did 6-6-6, what then?  I also note that the rules admonish one to use this approach only on a "temporary basis," which I guess means that they don't want a golfer to do this very often.  Would you agree?  In any case, I'm going to play around with our scorecard and see what kind of results I get, at least as an academic exercise.  Either the rule I was remembering is an old rule, replaced by current 5.2g, or else I am going crazy, which is quite possible.

[Carl Johnson]

...as I understand it, you must post your score as played from the entire set of tees for the course from the longest tee (e.g., black in our case) from which you played, which has the potential to artificially lower your handicap.  A solution would be to publish the slope and rating for each hole, and then let the golfers calculate the total for various tee markers from which they played.  The difficulty, of course, is that this approach is just not practical under the USGA handicap reporting system as it is set up today...

You understand wrong. The USGA publishes a table to modify rating and slope by yardage. Just calculate the extra, or fewer yards you played from the yards for the tees you most commonly played. Then enter your score using rating and slope just like you would for a course not in your system where you enter your scores.

Thanks, Garland.  I looked up the rule you referred to and it is 5.2g in the Handicap Manual.  The basic rule is for unrated tees on a course that has rated tees, but 5.2g goes on to say: "This method may also be used if a player plays a combination of tees. The player first determines the total yardage played then applies the above procedure."  Presumably this means "a combination of [rated] tees."  That's the case I was thinking about.  I'm not entirely sure how to determine the appropriate "most commonly" played tees in that situation, assuming that's the baseline, which the wording seems to suggest.  I suppose if you had a plurality of tees, say you played five green, five white and eight blue, you'd key of the blue tees as most commonly played.  If you played from five green, seven white, three blue and three black, then you'd key off the white tees.  Do you think this is what the rules would call for?  If you did 6-6-6, what then?  I also note that the rules admonish one to use this approach only on a "temporary basis," which I guess means that they don't want a golfer to do this very often.  Would you agree?  In any case, I'm going to play around with our scorecard and see what kind of results I get, at least as an academic exercise.  Either the rule I was remembering is an old rule, replaced by current 5.2g, or else I am going crazy, which is quite possible.

O.K., here's my "play around with" result.  My club's rated single color tees, from shortest to longest, are green, white, blue, black.  I put together a hypothetical combination of 9 green and 9 black tees.  Using the USGA table for men, if I key off the blue as the most commonly played, I get (for the green-black) a rating of 69.1 and a slope of 129.  If I key off the white, I get a rating of 69.7 and a slope of 129.  The result surprised me because I had assumed that the ratings would be more likely to match than the slopes.  Obviously, the tables aren't perfect.  I guess this is why the USGA says the use of the table should be only temporary and that "[t]his procedure is not a substitute for a formal USGA Course Rating and Slope Rating."

[Garland Bayley]

It seems to me you could just total the yardage played, and adjust to the set of tees with the closest total.

I'm not real knowledgeable about their calling it temporary. I suspect that maybe if a club builds a new tee or tees, the club should get a course rating using those new tee(s) instead of constantly using this procedure.

JVB, who I believe to be a USGA course rater, is the one who first made me aware of this. Huck, who I believe is also a USGA course rater, has discussed it with me on a thread here. You are the first to mention anything temporary about it.

My understanding of why this works is that distance is by far the overriding factor in course rating and slope.

[Tom Huckaby]

I certainly never thought I'd ever write this, but:

Garland is exactly right.  

I am a course rater in the USGA sense.  5.2g is meant to be temporary because it does not take into account hazards and other factors - it is just distance-based.  So yep, it works temporarily because the largest factor by far in course rating is distance; but it's imperfect because it doesn't take into account the other factors.  Note also 5.2g is meant to be applied to full courses; not hole by hole.

A key thing to remember also is we only rate tees at all that are 25 or more yards apart.  Thus ratings and slopes for some combination sets of existing tees is easy to do, but only if the hole has been rated from each separate tee; in that case, just add up all 18 hole ratings and voila, there you go.  But if the tee has not been rated, it's guesswork, and yes the imperfct 5.2g comes into play as you just adjust from the closest TOTAL.

[Carl Johnson]

I certainly never thought I'd ever write this, but:

Garland is exactly right.  

I am a course rater in the USGA sense.  5.2g is meant to be temporary because it does not take into account hazards and other factors - it is just distance-based.  So yep, it works temporarily because the largest factor by far in course rating is distance; but it's imperfect because it doesn't take into account the other factors.  Note also 5.2g is meant to be applied to full courses; not hole by hole.

A key thing to remember also is we only rate tees at all that are 25 or more yards apart.  Thus ratings and slopes for some combination sets of existing tees is easy to do, but only if the hole has been rated from each separate tee; in that case, just add up all 18 hole ratings and voila, there you go.  But if the tee has not been rated, it's guesswork, and yes the imperfct 5.2g comes into play as you just adjust from the closest TOTAL.

Huck,

Please bear with me as I try to get my arms around this thing.  My original proposition was this.  Say my Sunday fourball decided to play a course that we construct from a combination of the furtherest back (Black) and furtherest forward (Green) tee markers.  We play holes one and two from the Greens, three from the Black, four from the Green, five from the Black, six from the Green and seven through nine from the Black.  We play the back side in a similar mixed-up manner.  Our course has four sets of colored tee markers, rated and sloped, and three hybrid sets of rated and sloped tees.  However, the Black-Green hybrid tee game that we made up for Sunday is not one of the three hybrid sets of rated and sloped tees.  Question 1.  Can we (properly) use 5.2g to record our scores for the afternoon at a slope and rating determined from the set of rated/sloped tees (regular or hybrid) that is closest in overall length to the total length of the course we played?  I know that each hole on our course is separately rated and sloped for each set of tees, and that if we had that information, we could simply add together the slopes and ratings for each of the tees from which we played.  However, we do not have that information.  In fact, I'm not even sure our club has that information.  I do know it is in the hands of the Carolinas Golf Association official who is, as I understand it, in charge of the slope and rating program.  Correct me if you think I am or may be wrong about this.  Question 2.  Is it appropriate for individual golfers to obtain all of the individual hole slope/rating numbers for each tee so that any time they wish they can play any combination of different tees and then, voila, make their own total slope and ratings by addition?  Question 3.  If the answer to question 1 is "no," and the Question 2 approach won't work, either because the data is not there or not properly available for that purpose, then what slope and rating would we use to record our scores from Sunday's Black-Green game?

Thanks, Carl

[Tom Huckaby]

That's a lot of questions, Carl.  My simple answer is this:  why not just play a set of rated tees?  Do you really have to make things so damn complex?

 

But really the answer is this:  to make this 100% accurate, you need to get the hole by hole, tee by tee info - the handicap chairman at your club should have it.  If not, the CGA will.  One way or the other, the only way to get an accurate course rating and slope for the tees you are playing is with this information.

As for whether this is appropriate, hell that's a policy question that's way over my head.  I just do ratings.  Seems harmless to me.

If you absolutely can't get this, then just use 5.2g, adjust the overall distance of the tees you are using v. the closest set of rated tees, and it will be close enough, at least for a few rounds here and there.  Seriously you are just talking a few points, and in the end your handicap index isn't likely to change much.  But another thought is this:  have your handicap chairman ask the CGA for a rating for the combo set you are doing.  It would be simple to compile.  Then there you have it, no more mystery.

TH

[Carl Johnson]

That's a lot of questions, Carl.  My simple answer is this:  why not just play a set of rated tees?  Do you really have to make things so damn complex?

 

But really the answer is this:  to make this 100% accurate, you need to get the hole by hole, tee by tee info - the handicap chairman at your club should have it.  If not, the CGA will.  One way or the other, the only way to get an accurate course rating and slope for the tees you are playing is with this information.

As for whether this is appropriate, hell that's a policy question that's way over my head.  I just do ratings.  Seems harmless to me.

If you absolutely can't get this, then just use 5.2g, adjust the overall distance of the tees you are using v. the closest set of rated tees, and it will be close enough, at least for a few rounds here and there.  Seriously you are just talking a few points, and in the end your handicap index isn't likely to change much.  But another thought is this:  have your handicap chairman ask the CGA for a rating for the combo set you are doing.  It would be simple to compile.  Then there you have it, no more mystery.

TH

Huck, Thanks for the advice.  Not the first time I've been called "Mr. Complexity," which is the sad point at which I've arrived after a career as a tax lawyer.  The idea was to just play some unusual tee combinations for variety, for fun, on occassion.  I don't actually know if I could convince by buddies to try this.  Carl

[Tom Huckaby]

Just giving you a hard time, Carl.  It does sound like fun, and heck you ought to be admired for trying to post your scores properly.

TH

[Garland Bayley]

Huck,

You forget he is a Tax Lawyer. He will now compute all the variations he can until he figures he finds the combination of tees that give him the highest traveling handicap for GCA events.