Square Tee Boxes

[David Wigler]

Guys,

I have tried for a couple of years to introduce the concept of Square tees to my club (Classic 1920's Alison design with several majors to her credit).  I run into two roadblocks I am hoping the tree house can help with.  The first; is it factually correct that Alison would have built square tee's?  The second; since we machine cut our tees instead of walking mowers, how much additional time would it take to cut square tee boxes? We have 46 (I think) tee boxes on the course.

On top of the two functional questions above, I think square tees look very cool and add to the overall ambiance of a course.  Is this a consensus opinion or a unique one?

Thanks,

Dave

[Ryan Farrow]

Most people here do not like square tee boxes.


I do, as well as a few others. A lot of classic courses have them and they seem to work just fine. They are also a breeze to maintain.

[David Wigler]

Ryan,

I know that you are planning on getting in the business.  I have argued to no avail that they would be easy to maintain.  Do you have any hard numbers on extra minutes it takes to cut a square tee box as opposed to machine cut a regular tee box?  We have both types of mowers.  Also what affect would this have on staffing?

[Anthony_Nysse]

Ryan,
  I think that you'd be surpirsed as to how many people don't mind square tees boxes-look at alot of the classic courses-Chicago, Yeamans, CC of Charleston, NGLA,, Shinnecock, Winged Foot, Oakmont and many of C&C courses also have sqare tees boxes. I played Olde Farm thins past weekend and loved the look-very classy, very traditional and really not much more time at on when tri-plexing tees. Just make sure that the corners come to a nice clean point.

Tony Nysse
Asst. Supt.
Long Cove Club
HHI, SC

[Rob_Waldron]

As long as the square tee boxes and the tee markers aim at the middle of the fairway they are acceptable. Unfortunately this is often NOT the case.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Dave,

Not sure which kind of tees C and A used.  Someone needs to write a book about them! There were some C and A courses in Chicago, including Bob O Link, with an old aerial show here recently.  I took a look at that old aerial and it appears he built two rectangular tees on most holes, longer than wide.  That may not be universal, but its an example to start.

Potentially, rectangles could be quicker to mow, providing you design them in 7 foot widths to replicate the width of your tee mower (perhaps a bit less for overlap) meaning tees at 27, 34, or 41 feet wide.  34 foot wide tees also also side to side tee marker placement on less busy days (assuming about 15 foot wide minimum)

Also, while the runway look ain't great, it is a fact that the fewer times you pick up the mower blades the quicker you mow, so combining a few tees to longer rectangles would be slightly more effective for mowing.  And, thats how Alison did them at Bob O Link......

I sense a growing consensus back to rectangular tees.  They certainly are more functional and can be built smaller, and even when placed on rolling ground, sometimes the corners can look kind of cool vs. the round edges generally following the contours.

[Ryan Farrow]

As Jeff said the longer the tee box is the cheaper it will be to maintain. I think this is something people on this board overlook when they critique runway tee boxes. And if its not the money maybe they should think about the young lads who wake up at 430 6-7 days a week to work on the course. Tee mowers are very bulky and heavy, if you haven’t hand mowed tees (the only way to go) picking up and dropping the mower blades really gets to be a pain after your 7th or 8th tee. From experience a change from rounded to square tee boxes was a good one. And I haven’t looked back.