Thinking through my last half dozen or so projects, I can’t recall any where we didn’t spend a significant amount of time adding forward tees. Furthermore, there is a lot of thought put into where they are placed and how they will be built. One technique I like to use is to work with the head pro to decide on an approximate yardage, place temporary tee markers/tees on every hole, develop a scorecard for those new tees and let golfers play those tees and share their opinions. After a certain amount of time and feedback, final decisions are made and formal tees are built. This process has worked very well and the courses/golfers love it. I literally just went through this process earlier today on a project. A new set of temporary tees will be added to a course taking the forward tee yardage from 5000 yards down to about 4200. We think most forward tee players will love it and the pro thinks it will bring more golfers to the course. I am anxious to get player feedback.
If only that sort of thoughtfulness were the norm.
The number of forward tees that are behind trees, or similarly odd locations sometimes amazes me. Other times, the placement is so random that you just shake your head.
I've been playing in Scotland since Aug. 1, and I have come to realize why some of the people on GCA who live in the UK are resistant to more sets of tees.
One thing is that the Scots I've played with, and hung out in the bar afterward with, just don't have a problem with holes that are impossibly difficult. They never question it. I've brought it up several times and the common response is essentially, "Aye, that's tough hole, innit?"
The other is, IMHO, that you see over and over three sets of tee markers that are within two to five yards of each other.
Then there's a place that tried to do something, and it ends up being just weird. We've played Tain a couple of times since we've been here, and my wife was happy to see that she didn't have to play 5,645 yards, they have new forward tees at 4,302.
And some of the new tees make perfect sense. They are positioned so that the carry over tall rough or water are a more reasonable length. Eight and sixteen being excellent examples. But then they turned two ~480-yard par fives into ~305-yard...par fives. So there's a 200-yard walk to play a hole that now barely resembles its former self. And eleven, which was a 370-yard par five is now a 282-yard par five.
Even the pro told her not to play the new tees.
If more courses used a thoughtful approach like you describe instead of, "Let's put out some more forward tees," without much thought about angles, carries and architectural interest, shorter courses would be much better received.