[Jim Thompson]

Courses today are designed to be played using multiples tees.  In effect, they have one landing area, and many tees.  So when you're playing from the "wrong" tee, and can't reach the effecting landing areas, then obviously the course won't work for you.  It'll feel too long or too short.

The "everybody hits to the same landing area approach" may very well be the greatest single indicator of lazy architecture.  It is a tell tale sign of many courses built during the dark ages even more obvious where clubs added tees to get to the landing area.  This approach also made "wrong tees".

We need to change the way courses are designed.  Have everyone start from the same spot (after all, we all finish at the same spot -- what's next, multiple hole locations??).  But design the hole to accomodate all sorts of tee shots from that one spot.  Have a swale 100 yards from the tee, then a dogleg at 200 yards, with a fairway bunker in between.  Then the green sits behind a small pond 260 yards away.  Holes would be all type of lengths, hazards would be in all types of locations.  Some in play for you, others in play for me.  Something for everyone to deal with, regardless of ability.

It's a completely different way to design.

Isn't this tad amount to saying I don't care what you score or your ability is?  If you shoot 140, so be it.  If you are a good player your approach wouldn't be a negative.  If your a beginner or a player with decreasing skills, it would be awful!  Between the time, fatigue, and demoralization of posting 150s you may have found the one way to end the game in twenty years.  The I don't care about you, the player, skill level in design may just be the only thing lazier than the single landing zone approach.  

The time and effort needed to create multiple landing zones for multiple tees that challenge varying skill levels is very difficult to do well.  It's hard and requires extra room in the design corridor.  When done properly it spreads turf wear - improving conditions - while allowing equitable games between players on different tees - increasing the chances to learn from your elders and nuture the future.  This is a noble and achievable goal.

RJ,

Does Jack's wife ever play from the men's tees for fun? Or the tips, just to break the monotony?  

Cheers!

JT

[Mike McGuire]

Is there a general yardage rule on the  physics of a golf ball struck from a different tee but different elevation ?

For instance a driver hole hole where the up tee is 50 ft ahead of the next tee but 5 ft lower. At what point do they play almost the same but avoid the baggage of playing the ladies tees vs the senior tees?

MM

[RJ_Daley]

Jim, somehow I don't believe Mrs. Jack's life has that much monotony to have to deal with by playing the tips.

[Tom Soileau]

Gee, this wouldn't have anything to do with the owners and target audiences/mebership.....would it?  Even Doak has mentioned that Mike Keiser wanted additional tees added to Pacific Dunes.

Be careful where you put the blame in that big bucket of generalities....

Brian,

I believe that you are correct about owners and their memberships having alot to do with the number of tees a course has.  The owner of the course we are working on now in Indian Wells wants six seperate tees.  Not tee boxes, but tee markers and he wants each to total a certain yardage.  He wants 5600 for the ladies then 6000, 6300, 6500, 6800 and then the pro/tournament tee which worked out to be about 7350.  Mr. Nicklaus feels very strongly that you should have no more than three teeing areas.  A pro/tournament tee, a larger tee area that might encompass two or three markers and then a ladies/senior tee.  He believes that even though a high handicap golfer should be playing one of the forward tees, he feels like a second class citizen driving by two, three and sometimes four seperate boxes before he gets to the tee he should play.  In turn, he ends up playing a tee that is too long for his ability.  Jack says let the pro or scratch golfer go back to the gorilla tee and let everyone else walk up on the main teebox and pick the marker they should play from.  By the way, he argued with the developer on a number of occassions and the compromise has been a really large middle tee with four sets of markers on it, the pro tee back and the ladies tee forward.  It looks terrible, but it is his golf course.  We are trying to talk him into a combination scorecard which will give him his total yardage, but reduce the number of tee markers to four from six.  

[Lloyd_Cole]

When Monet painted what later became to be considered his masterpieces, he was not painting for a patron or master, but for himself.

For every Monet there is a Dickens or a Dostoyevsky, both of whom were paid by the chapter.

[DMoriarty]

Mike H,   I suggested the same thing a while back but received a less positive response.   Yet more proof that you are a better man than me.  

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=67;start=0

[TEPaul]

I certainly don't think multiple tees in golf and architecture should be considered "lazy architecture".

If one looks very carefully at the evolution of golf and architecture in about the last 120 years one can see that increased tees and teeing areas and increasingly varied distances from which golfers of vastly differing physical abilities may start any hole is essentially golf's slow and evolutionary attempt at political correctness---eg to treat everyone and anyone as equally as possible!

Over that time the idea and basic goal is that theoretically anyway everyone no matter their vastly differing physical abilities could (theoretically) arrive at the green in the same number of strokes (and astoundingly even using the same types of clubs to do so!).

The idea of GIR, which is relatively recent and is becoming an inceasing fixation with all is the result of all this increasing fixation with political correctness or equality for all!

The ever increasing use of multiple tees is nothing more really than an attempt to better perfect handicapping in golf, and it's been that way for about 80-90 years and is definitely increasing.

If one really looks closely at the ever increasing use of multiple tees in golf over its entire evolution it's probably not much more than golf's attempt to condense down nearly everyone to the point where no one basically would need to receive more than one stroke per hole handicap-wise from anyone else and certainly never more than two!

In golf, there's only two ways to handicap really---give golfers who need it the appropriate headstart in distance and a stroke if they need that too! Why do it that way instead of from the same tee for all? Probably simply because it's just easier to do in a mathematical sense---and handicapping in the end is all about math since golf is always broken down into stroke increments for all!

Ron Prichard had a fascinating remark in his Aronimink master plan from Donald Ross in the real old days when he mentioned that once everyone played from the same tee markers on all holes---and if it took the strong man two shots to reach a green with his best and a lady four shots to reach a green with her best that's just the way it was.

But that's too difficult to constantly calculate handicap-wise so golf began to evolve into giving those that physically needed it an appropriate headstart distance-wise too so as to try to keep handicap stroke allocations as close to a single stroke per hole as possible.

In my opinion, multiple tees is nothing much more than golf's attempt to handicap as easily as possible. That's were it all started and it hasn't changed except to increase the adjustment as equitably as possible.

And in my opinion, to start everyone from the same tee markers again, as golf once was, would be massively more difficult to do architecturally--given this modern day expectation of equality or political correctness for all. I don't think that means that architects who build multiple tees are lazy architects they're simply responding to expectation today which is apparently a necessity of how golfers' today basically feel about the entire concept of handicapping which is everyone should be made to feel as equal as golf and architecture can make them!

Personally, I think I'm sorry to see it all come to this----which I guess means I agree with Jeremy Glenn---at least on some golf courses.

The little old man does not run the 100 yard dash as fast as the world champion sprinter (does not get to the finish line at the same time) so why make him feel like he could or he should? Obviously the reason one makes him feel more like he could or should (giving him a headstart to get to the finishline at the same time) is because it just makes him feel better--he doesn't have to think about his inadaquacies as much as if he had to start from the same point!  

If some little old guy starts a hole 150 yards closer to the green than does Tiger Woods and he makes a four and beats Tiger on the hole with his handicap stroke what does he remember most---the fact that he beat Tiger on that hole or the fact that he started the hole 150 yards closer to it?

The answer is obvious and that's why we have more and more multiple tees in golf, in my opinion.

[Mike Hendren]

David,

Thank you for exposing the fact that I cull and recycle old threads given my incapacity for original thoughts.

Mike
A Pizza Man    

[Brian_Gracely]

Tom Soileau,

Tell Mr.Nicklaus that whenever he gets into those types of discussions/arguments that he needs to immediately bring in Kimmie.  It should solve all disputes  

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom Paul,

It's golf's version of affirmative action, only without any real historical basis for the "head start".  

Put a tee in the ground, hit the friggin ball, keep hitting it until you putt out, and go and do it again.

Simple concept, needlessly complicated.

[Mike_Young]

I think the total square footage of the tees on a particulr hole are much more important than how many "sets of tee" are on the hole. For Ex: more tee on par 3 apprx 9000 sq ft and less on holes that will always require a wood.   While I would prefer course only have 3 sets of tees, it is hard to sell.
And also IMHO, the new technology still requires a certeain amount of clubhead speed which many ladies and elderly men cannot generate.  Thus there is a need for forward tees on holes of increased length.
JMO

[TEPaul]

MikeC:

You're absolutely right---affirmative action is a much better analogy than politcal correctness.

However, I do wish GMGC had more forward tees back in the 1940s in which case they may not have ripped out all Ross's top-shot bunkers as unnecessarily penalizing and unfair to grandma and her fellow travelers! Too bad I wasn't there in the 1940s as I would've just recommended they build shorter tees closer to the top-shot bunkers to overcome Grandma's carry problem. That wouldn't have worked either, though, as the rich misers just would've asked me if that cost more money and I'd have had to tell them; "Well, uh, yeah, obviously it will" and then they would've told me; "Well, forget that solution then!"  

[Forrest Richardson]

Golf, in the beginning, was never meant to be a game played necessarily from a particular starting point, other than , perhaps, a few paces from the previous hole. As this hole changed — and it did very often — so did the starting point.

The natural thing to do in designing our courses is to vary the places at which a golfer begins each hole. This is part of the fun of golf, just as the custom of changing our cup placements.

The architect who tells you that there should only be one or two places to start a hole is not allowing the game to have the freedom it deserves.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Cirba,

I disagree with you for several reasons.

1st, you have to consider the broader base of golfers playing courses today.  Senior men, Senior Women, Juniors, Championship quality players, and the general membership.

One of the things that you and others fail to focus on when you discuss multiple tees is the angle of attack that they present.

You and others tend to view them in a strictly linear nature without giving any consideration to the incremental difficulty in the angles of attack as you move from the forward to the rear tees.

Is it fair to require lesser players to carry water from 190 yards, or, as their markers are moved up, should their angle of attack be softened as well.

I happen to be of the Ron Prichard olde school, but the reality is that memberships today comprise a far broader spectrum of golfer from when the old dead guys designed their courses in the begining of the 20th century, and as such, in order to appeal to the needs or abilities of that broader spectrum of golfer, the golf course needs to present an entirely different challenge, while retaining the element of enjoyment or fun, and, the only way to do that is through multiple tees.

One would think that with your chipping skills that you would understand that.

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