The Ladies Tees: A course within a course

[K Rafkin]

Before I get too far into things I want to specify that this thread is meant to be about the 90% of female golfers, not the select few accomplished golfers who are not all that negatively impacted by the status quo.  Pretty much any golfer over a single digit who can't drive the ball 200 yards and cannot effectivly play the 5000+ yrd "red tees".  In addition a lot of this should also apply to young kids as well.




It's no secret that the avenger woman is one of the most neglected throughout the industry.  It's completely unreasonable to expect someone whose AVERAGE drive is under 180yrds to play 18 holes from 5400+ yards, and in reality tons of these golfers are driving the ball far less than that.  I'll concede that this isn't exactly a secret, although very little has been done to make the game accessible to this disenfranchised group.


At one point you've all heard someone say "the course is designed to play from the tips", but I've never heard someone say the course is designed to play from 4000 yards.  Since this issue isn't exactly a secret I've seen a few courses (long after they were built) toss in an extra pair of tees at a reasonable distance for these golfers, but these tees are just an afterthought.  Nothing went into the course design to even consider how these golfers might play the course.  A golfer playing a par 4 from the 7200 yard tees, and a golfer playing the same hole from the 4000 yard tees are going to interact with the hole completely differently, and play completely different shots.  Hazards that the golfer playing from the tips is trying to carry, the 4000 yard golfer may already be in front of.  The angles might be different, and in no way should their second shots be from the same spot (If the 4000 yard golfers ball isn't much closer to the hole its a fail), so once again the shots are going to be (or at least should be) completely different.  From a design standpoint tons of thought goes into what the next shot is going to look like for a 280 yard drive from the tips, but from what I've seen very little has gone into how the hole is going to play from the 4000 yard tees. 


This brings me to my point that within the golf courses that you and I play everyday there exists a much smaller golf course for those who need to play from those distances, and more often than not that smaller golf course is far inferior to the longer one that you and i are playing.  Just because a hole is a good hole from 420 yards does not mean that It is a good hole from 230 yards.  The more i started thinking about this the more I started paying attention to these tees (if the course happens to have them) and i realized that many of these "great" courses that get awarded Top 100 rankings or high Doak scores are not necessarily great from the playability standpoint of the majority of women golfers.  Has there ever been a Women's Top 100 list?  If so I can imagine that it might look very different from the ones we are used to seeing.


I do realize that from a design standpoint this is very difficult.  How do you make a hole "great" for every type of golfer?  Adding variables makes designing a hole more difficult, which is why there are more "great" par 3s than par 5s.  I just don't think that the forward women's tees should be an afterthought, which they are in so many situations.


In Britain i've seen courses set the ladies tees close to the mens tees, and just bump par up a stroke or two.  While its a nice sentiment this does nothing in creating good golf holes/courses for this group of golfers.  #notasolution


More consideration needs to be made to building golf courses that not only have shorter tee boxes, but actually offer all the same strategy and variety that we use to determine greatness, from all distances. 


I hear "grow the game" all the time, and I believe that there are plenty of women who want to jump in the game, but in too many instances the actually playing of the game is far to inaccessible.  Should Lydia Ko or Brooke Henderson or any other LPGA golfer create a similar golf boom comparable for to Tiger's, but for women, golf courses need to be ready if we are to truly grow the game. 

[Brian Finn]

This story and list should be of interest to you.

http://www.golfdigest.com/story/top-50-courses-for-women-2011-06

[Ronald Montesano]

The fact that the story is five years old tells you the importance of the average (avenger?) woman golfer in the eyes of the big rags.


Notice that the article assesses Resort courses in the majority. Precisely the type of course that a woman (much like a dude) might play once a year. That is the first flaw in the perspective of women from men journalists list-writers.


I know a course that caters successfully to women. Guess why? It doesn't have a niche among the men. It needed to set a price point that was too high for its worth. There were better area courses that could charge $35-$50 (western New York is not like other areas) and get it, but this course could not. Charge $20-$25 and it would go out of business. It learned to charge $20-$30 and cater to a unique clientele.


I was told by other course owners that this was an ideal move by that particular course; it sounds and probably is sexist, but in order to stay in business, that is what this track opted to do.


The average women golfers that I know like to travel. They don't typically "club-up" in that fraternal way that men do. Instead, they have a smaller, intimate brood that moves around. Notice how the GD article referenced amenities; these are mildly important to men and of supreme importance to many average women golfers.


I've often heard that men like to build monuments and women prefer to build relationships. Perhaps golf courses are viewed as monuments, and so their appearance and worth that men consider of great importance are not valued so highly by the average woman golfer.


The girls that I have coached over the years have attached little worth to the quality of courses that we play. If I didn't go a bit overboard and say "This is a Ross" or "This is a Travis" or "This is an RTJ," they wouldn't discern much difference between them. When we get on the public tracks over which our tournaments are contested (all Canadian and not designed by GCAs found on here), I've yet to hear a question about fair or unfair. Closest we got was the Power Hole, as it will be forever known: Par Three of 140 yards, between/beneath power towers and lines that run east from Toronto to Oshawa, a perfect example of Let's not waste the space.


Until someone does a profound and accurate study of the needs and wants, golf-wise, of the average women golfer, I and the rest of the golfing world will do no more than surmise.

[Sean_A]

For me, the bottom line is that asking an archie to build the 4000 yard tees as interesting as the 7000 yard tees is pure folly.  The course will either be boring, flooded with features which could be a maintenance nightmare...thus driving up the cost or just another cartball course....which of course "solves" all these proper distance tees, but at the cost of walking.

It might be much easier to properly (meaning interesting course and easily walked) cater to the 4000 Club if the entire footprint of courses was reduced to 6000ish yards (at most)...mind you, I think archies would still be up against it.  In effect, that would be course would "neglect" the best 10-15% of golfers to encourage the worst 10-15% golfers, the oldsters and youngsters. On paper it sounds fine, but the women golfers have to exist and be ready to pony up.  I doubt there are that many opportunities in the market for this sort of design.  To be honest, I could see something like this doing okay in parts of Europe where women are traditionally (or at least a longer tradition) the equal of men in clubs because the market for women is already more advanced. 


I think the only real solutions are for women to put up their money and build the courses they want to play.  It sounds harsh, but why not?  I am very suprised we haven't seen this sort of forward thinking from far more women.  Perhaps this lack of get up and go is indicative of the golf market for women. 


Ciao

[Charlie Ray]

My former club’s number of rounds are nearly equally split between men and women.  And I played many a rounds with them.  Three things that I experienced that might apply to this topic.

1.  Because of low swing speeds the majority of women carry the ball nearly the same distance with each club.  Therefore, the increase of difficulty between hitting a 5wood shot over a greenside bunker or hitting a short iron for the same shot is not as polarizing in their game.  Thus the risk/reward of challenging a bunker or hazard of the tee is not proportional as it is the player who possesses a higher swing speed.

2. Attempting not to sound sexist:  a higher percentage of women are less concerned with par than men.  Women are competitive, but in a recreational 4-ball, it has been my experienced that a woman’s enjoyment is not as closely tied to the number of strokes.  (This thought was expressed much better in an above post)

3. Architecture is closely tied to my enjoyment of the game (I think all of us on the site would agree).  I also believe that good architecture can nurture (perhaps grow) the game and bad architecture can decrease play.  Thus ‘strategy’ intended for those that would benefit from playing 4000 yard courses need not be about adding features, but eliminating unplayable feature, i.e. forced carries.   With this in mind I am certain that in a properly handicapped match I (6 handicap) would loose the majority of matches to women at Oakmont,   And win the majority of matches at Sawgrass.

[Dan Herrmann]

Best course from the front tees I've ever seen is Pacific Dunes.   Laura found it to be great fun and great challenge from those tees.

[Pete Lavallee]

Dan,

Was that from the new Blue tees which are just placed in the fairway (like they did at Old MacDonald) or the shortest formal set?