Tim,
If you're playing with three other friends, and you're playing matches against one another, who determines which tees you'll play from on each hole ?
I have two really good friends with whom I've been playing matches for years. Our abilities come and go and from one year to the next (or sometimes from one day to the next) any one of the three may be the better player. I've always pretty much played the two of them straight up even when our handicaps may be 4 or 5 strokes apart as an extreme (usually within 3). We know one another well enough that none of us would ever feel very good about beating the others with strokes. We play to beat one another. The games are primarily friendly but we all want to win. When I'm playing with those two we will usually play the same tee as one another on each hole. We might determine the tees for each hole the night before if we plan to mix and match. Or we might let the winner of each hole choose the next tee. Or commonly we may just play one set of tees. We are all good with the variety.
Here's a few examples of some of the other matches I played this year with people whose games I didn't know as well. The fun here was devising games that would seem to be evenly matched without giving strokes. If they ended up being lopsided the stakes were low enough that it didn't matter. If it ended up being a closely contested match (and many of these worked surprisingly well) then the match was a bonus in addition to the course, the walk, and the friendship.
I played one match as a 13 index against a 3 (or something like that) where I played the front tees and he played the tips. Or at least that was the plan until he injured himself on the 1st hole and walked off the course 5 holes later (victory!!!)
We salvaged that round by having two of us play from the front tees and use our better ball against a +1 playing from the tips. We lost that one!
I played a match against a mid single digit handicap that also plays with hickories and carries a 12 handicap as a hickory player. We played a more forward set of tees than usual but not the fronts. I think I lost that one!
In the same round, a buddy and I teamed up against said hickory player and a hickory playing partner in a four ball. We all played the same tees because their hickory indexes were roughly equivalent to our regular indexes ( well, ok, one of the guys has since been ID'd as a hickory hustler). We lost that one but it was an epic 23 holer that saw us with a substantial lead after the first nine.
I played a low handicapper in a match where every time I lost a hole I moved up a set of tees and every time I won a hole I moved back a set of tees (on the consition that I'd never play from a set behind him). I may have lost that one too although I don't have the card handy and I am pretty sure it came down to the last hole.
OK I am going to stop providing examples now as I am recalling just how many matches I lost this year. Now you know why I like to play for low stakes!
Getting back to the topic at hand, I enjoy a little extra tee variety because I lack any semblance of a game and I might just get bored playing the same set of tees over and over.
