Aging Raters, and the Rest of Us

[Bob Montle]

Two things stood out that I kept waiting for someone to bring up.
1) Variety.   REGARDLESS OF WHAT TEES YOU USE, you should have a variety of short to long par 3's 4's and 5's
2) Long and short FOR THE PLAYER.

You have golfers whose drives only go 180 yards and others who hit their 7-irons that far.   But to my thinking, the short and long hitters should all have a par 3 reachable with a short iron and a long par 3 (for him/her) where a wood  is required.   

The problem I see is where the tees are moved up all to the same distances for the seniors or women but they don't provide variety.  It is crazy to have all par 3's 100 to 120 yards for the women.  Or all par 4's 300 to 350 yds for the seniors.  UGH.

IMHO

[Doug Wright]

Has any top-quality course gone down in your estimation as you've gotten older and your skills deteriorate? Has any gone up?

And, for those who've played a favourite quality course at various times over many years, has anyone ever actually moved up a set of tees to compensate?

Peter, to address your original question above, yes the Broadmoor East course has gone down in my estimation with age and my declining skills/distance. This is primarily because of the length of some of the RTJ holes where I am hitting woods into the raised greens instead of medium irons. I just find several of these holes to be tedious slogs that frankly aren't very interesting. In the past I thought these holes had some strategy because a well placed drive afforded a better opportunity at those very challenging greens. One or two of these is OK but a series of 440 yard par 4s are too much for me these days. Broadmoor East still is one of my favorite courses in Colorado because of the terrific Ross holes and especially the challenging greens. It just isn't the same course. I guess it's time to wave the white flag and move up on these holes as you suggest.

[Thomas Dai]

Two things stood out that I kept waiting for someone to bring up.
1) Variety.   REGARDLESS OF WHAT TEES YOU USE, you should have a variety of short to long par 3's 4's and 5's
2) Long and short FOR THE PLAYER.

I looked at the grips on a set of clubs used by a low hcp long hitter the other day. The putter, driver, fairway metal and driving iron grips were very worn so were the grips on the 7-LW. The others showed no obvious signs of wear, barely of use.
I then looked at a short hitting but still good players grips. Putter, driver, fairway metals and hybrid grips were well worn as were those on the W-LW, the others were barely used.
atb

[jeffwarne]

Two things stood out that I kept waiting for someone to bring up.
1) Variety.   REGARDLESS OF WHAT TEES YOU USE, you should have a variety of short to long par 3's 4's and 5's
2) Long and short FOR THE PLAYER.

You have golfers whose drives only go 180 yards and others who hit their 7-irons that far.   But to my thinking, the short and long hitters should all have a par 3 reachable with a short iron and a long par 3 (for him/her) where a wood  is required.   

The problem I see is where the tees are moved up all to the same distances for the seniors or women but they don't provide variety.  It is crazy to have all par 3's 100 to 120 yards for the women.  Or all par 4's 300 to 350 yds for the seniors.  UGH.

IMHO

Bob,
You bring up a common issue.
The more "sets" of tees demanded, the more often this will happen within a given set of tees.
A hole or holes may have been designed where the topography works from several sets of tees, but absolutely doesn't work(or at least without a lot of earth moving) for several others. Rather tha eliminate what might be a really good hole from the back and regular tees, a few tees may be placed on the far side of the intervening terrain or wherever its easier to build them.


Or sometimes, it's just symetrical placing of tees, each one 30-40 yards apart.
The problem can be solved by the player simply mixing and matching tees.
Forward tees are particularly troubling as "women" come in all shapes, sizes and abilities, but seldom will venture off the "red" tees, which are becoming ever increasinly shorter(and homogonized) as courses continue to add shorter tees.


Again, the same as one size doesn't fit all, courses that try to be all things to all people often end up with the homogonized tees you reference-as one might wonder why they're building yet another tee that isn't substantially differently placed (and unfortunately proportionate) than the others.


Setup can solve a lot of this but crew are loathe to double up on tees and leave others vacant when the number of physical tee matches the sets of markers.
Or you get the resorts that don't even bother to use the back two sets and push all tees forward where they don't sniff card yardages-all in the name of pace of play.


I often hear players complain they can't mix and match tees because they have no way to post scores, but they never mention this when posting off a course where the tees were two blocks up the day they played from where they were rated. The same guys that drop for lost balls and pick up 6 footers.

[JMEvensky]

I often hear players complain the can't mix and match tees because the yhave no way to post scores, but they never mention this when posting off a course where the tees were two blocks up the day they played from where they were rated. The same guys that drop for lost balls and pick up 6 footers.

+1 to your entire post but this paragraph in particular.


In another thread, Tom Doak wrote that everyone wants a set of tee markers tailored to his/her individual game.Combo tees are the answer to almost all of these complaints--if people would try them.