Tom, as an esteemed architect how much thought do you give to the number and location of women's tee complexes in your course designs knowing the costs involved and that men comprise 80% of the rounds of golf played each year - arguably even more so at public courses? I ask this purely out of curiosity. I'd love to hear from other GCA's on this subject as well. I will say that at my club they've done a nice job of having 3 or 4 tee complexes on non Par3's that cater the varying skill levels of the woman golfer. Most of them are raised and if they are not they are at least on level ground and were built there intentionally.
Mike:
I worked for Pete and Alice Dye for several years, and Mrs. Dye was passionate about making their courses more fun and less unfair for the average woman golfer. Plus, my mom was a high handicapper and my wife [and my ex] never played until they met me, so it's not hard for me to visualize how the average woman is going to have to get around one of my courses, and what I need to do so they can have a bit of fun out there.
To me, spending a lot of time thinking about tee placement would miss the real point. The important thing for women [and for higher-handicap men] is to make the course playable "through the green," as the Rule book calls it. If we can minimize or eliminate forced carries except on an occasional tee shot, and design our greens so a woman can hit a 3-wood approach and not wind up in a hazard in front or behind it, then she'll be okay even if the tees are a little longer than ideal for her.
Occasionally, on rugged land, what's a good hole for guys [150-yard diagonal carry over a ravine off the tee] leaves no good option for women to give them the same challenge: you have to choose between making it too difficult for them, or too easy. It amazes me that any architect would choose the former! Even so, the situation is less than ideal; that's the difficulty of having to design at two or three different scales at the same time, and one reason I'm so adamant that the governing bodies should keep equipment in check, so the gaps from women to men to Tour pros don't keep getting bigger.
The other thing that holds back optimum design for women's golf is a tendency to demand "equal treatment" as men -- particularly, building big things that look like tees. If you put those out where they really need to be, they're sometimes in the landing area for the back tee, and they're ugly as sin. At Old Macdonald and Streamsong, our forward tees are just flat spots in the area mown as fairway -- which not only looks better from further back, but has the benefit that even a topped shot will roll out 50 yards or more, instead of getting stuck in the rough right in front of the tee. But some women are offended by that, thinking I am treating them as second-class citizens. Nothing could be further from the truth.