[Thomas Dai]

Some folks are bigger and stronger and fitter and better ball strikers than others. However, there comes a point as age or physical limitations start to take over that hitting driver followed by an iron to a green becomes driver followed by fairway metal/hybrid. It then becomes driver, fairway metal, pitch. Then driver, fairway metal, short iron. Etc etc. Eventually it becomes driver, several fairway metals followed by an approach. And after a time, a short time, repetitively hitting endless fairway metals gets bloody boring. As numerous holes have been driver, several fairway metals followed by an approach for many ladies for decades I’m amazed that as many ladies play the game as they do.
As to walking further from the previous green to the next (well forward) tee, well walking forward is a lot better than walking back and given that course routings come in all sorts of shapes and sizes it means that a long walk forward won’t necessary on every hole.
Atb

[corey miller]

My club was a par 70 with three sets (Red,white,blue)  of tees roughly 5700, 6400, 6600.  With our renovation I accepted the notion of more tees in an attempt to make everyone happy so we added green (SR) which was between the ladies and the member tees.


The ladies fought the move which would have created two courses for them.  Months into the change we somehow added a black/back tee because the course (now almost 7000 yards) "was too hard for those that should be playing the back"


So now we have five sets of tees on multiple tee pads and people are still complaining of where the tees are on individual holes.  They don't want to mix and match because that will "mess up handicap" and the cries are incessant. 


What I do know is, and regardless of what a Superintendent will tell you, there becomes much less variability in where the markers go on individual days especially on holes with multiple tees on one tee pad.


We also have people "complaining" of the lack of variability in length/club on our par 3 holes which could easily be solved by NOT using multiple tees and moving the markers around.


I did not play enough this year to become "bored" with the same set-up everyday but it is a concern where you don't even have to think about what club to hit off most tees and what direction because the distance is always the same.


I have been encouraging my PGA pro to trademark and implement the ROYGBIV tee system because that is where we headed and few see the idiocy. 


Can a architect just stand up and say "three sets and move them around"?   

[Steve_ Shaffer]

We have 3 courses at the " active adult, 55+" community where I live in the West Valley of Phoenix. 2 now have yellow forward tees- 3806y and 3844y. Many residents arrive here with little or no golf background so we encourage beginners to play there after getting lessons from our teaching pros.  The Red tees are 4890y and 4688y. Many of our older players, men AND women play from there. Also, available are " mixed" tees from red and white tees at 5195y and 5153y.


IMO red tees should be replaced with silver tees as  many still refer to them as " ladies" tees. The times, they are a changing...even in golf.

[Mark_Fine]

I agree Steve.  There is a stigma about tee colors.  However, I always play the RED tees at Newport CC in RI 

[Garland Bayley]

...
A 290 yard hole can be both entertaining and fun for the bomber as well as the 150 driver, if designed with both in mind-even playing from the same pad.It can also be far more social.
...

The best players at our club this winter have been out playing the 4200 yard set of tees (par 70). They can't post for handicap, so they have been having fun driving the green on par 4s and reaching all par 5s in two. My group was in front of them one day, and I worried about us holding them up because they were waiting on the tee for us to clear the green on the par 4s. But, that was the only time they waited, because they did not speed up holing out in any way. We did get to see them reaching the greens while we were on the next tee.

[Garland Bayley]

The USGA has found that women drive the ball 70% as far as men do.
Another thing you can look to is the USGA lengths used for defining scratch and bogey golfers.
                  Scratch men                       Scratch women                             Bogey men                                  Bogey women
Carry               230                                         190                                               180                                                   130
Roll                    20                                           20                                                  20                                                     20
Total                250                                         210                                                200                                                  150
This table doesn't reflect the reality of their driving distance study mentioned first. Scratch women play at 84% of scratch men, and bogey women play at 75% of bogey men.

As you can see, 150 is 60% of 250. So if you have 6500 yard tees for your longer men, it suggests 3900 yard tees for your shorter women.

If you use the 70% given in the first stat, you might end up with 3600 yard tees on your 6500 yard course.

Hope these numbers help.

[Steve Lang]

The USGA has found that women drive the ball 70% as far as men do.
Another thing you can look to is the USGA lengths used for defining scratch and bogey golfers.
                  Scratch men                       Scratch women                             Bogey men                                  Bogey women
Carry               230                                         190                                               180                                                   130
Roll                    20                                           20                                                  20                                                     20
Total                250                                         210                                                200                                                  150
This table doesn't reflect the reality of their driving distance study mentioned first. Scratch women play at 84% of scratch men, and bogey women play at 75% of bogey men.

As you can see, 150 is 60% of 250. So if you have 6500 yard tees for your longer men, it suggests 3900 yard tees for your shorter men.

If you use the 70% given in the first stat, you might end up with 3600 yard tees on your 6500 yard course.

Hope these numbers help.

   Garland,
Can't see those numbers helping, nor 3900 or 3600 yd tees...  maybe for an executive course on the back 40...  can't be proportional to driving distances, needs some more variables and higher functions

[MCirba]

My wife is pretty athletic and fit, never really took a lesson and didn't play golf until she met me.   A good drive goes perhaps 150 yards, more often averages about 125.

We live in some pretty hilly terrain, and I can tell you that she enjoys golf way more when she just forgets about wherever the tee is and tees up somewhere around where the fairway starts.   Then she can...with a few solid shots, reach many if not most greens in regulation and doesn't feel intimidated that she's holding others up.

At some courses prior when we'd play the "red tees" she'd be on some par five of 485 yards, which would require driver, three wood, three wood and assuming those were all hit solidly might still be looking at over 100 yards for her approach.   Dub a few and you're talking 5 or 6 full swings to reach a green.  All the more fun if it's some uphill slog.  We like to talk about "fun" in here but I can tell you that without 4,200 yard tees most women would rather go shopping.  That's also an ideal distance for young kids (I grew up playing a 2200 yard nine-hole course that was all I could handle and a great place to learn and develop) as well as the aged and infirm.

And...if she has to walk a little along with me from the previous green to wherever the fairway cut starts, I'm not understanding the perceived harm there?

 

[Kalen Braley]

And...if she has to walk a little along with me from the previous green to wherever the fairway cut starts, I'm not understanding the perceived harm there?

Mike,

Its the same basis that's been oft discussed here.

If you're building a course that's 7200 from the tips, its been the consensus on this site that if playing from the 6200 yard tees, then you shouldn't have to walk past all those longer tees, just to get to yours.  And I agree with that, given that 95% of the time, no one is using those tees anyways...

So the same logic is being applied here, why should people who want to play from 4500 yards have to walk past all those other tees to get to thiers...

[Steve Lang]

   Reminded of Carol Mann, when she came to the Woodlands CC, dug up the North Course's back tees and made new forward tees at 4996 yds, ladies loved it!


PS Ms Sheila says just don't put the ladies tee in a hole!  Give some views!

[Mark_Fine]

Kalen,
Unless I am missing something it is because you are not walking over the same ground twice.  You are walking "forward" to the forward tees vs walking backward to the back tees. 

[Kalen Braley]

Kalen,
Unless I am missing something it is because you are not walking over the same ground twice.  You are walking "forward" to the forward tees vs walking backward to the back tees.

Mark,

This issue is a bit nuanced. IMO, the tee boxes that will be used by the most amount of golfers should be placed nearest to the prior green when possible.

For example, if only 5% of golfers use the back tee, its burdensome to make 100% of golfers walk past them to get to their tee.  This makes the course longer for everyone, instead of just letting that 5% walk back to their tees and then back forward again.

On the other hand, if only 10% of golfers use the up tees, it would also be burdensome to place the up tees nearest the greens and make the other 90% walk back to their tees and then forward again.

or....

Carts for everyone and problem solved.  No doubt I've seen examples of this here in Utah. South Mountain in Draper plays over 7k on the card, with an extra 3-4k yards of space in between the holes.  If you tried to walk it, it'd be well over 10,000 yards long.. 

[Mark_Fine]

Kalen,
All I was saying and I think others were as well is most forward tees are a walk forward from the previous hole.  This is a walk they will have to make no matter what tees they elect to play on each hole that follows.  Worst case, they walk past the back tee and the middle tees until they get to the forward tee.  Best case they walk right to their tee off the previous green and everyone else walks backward.  By adding forward tees you are NOT adding any extra walking distance for forward tee players to their round. 

[Garland Bayley]

The USGA has found that women drive the ball 70% as far as men do.
Another thing you can look to is the USGA lengths used for defining scratch and bogey golfers.
                  Scratch men                       Scratch women                             Bogey men                                  Bogey women
Carry               230                                         190                                               180                                                   130
Roll                    20                                           20                                                  20                                                     20
Total                250                                         210                                                200                                                  150
This table doesn't reflect the reality of their driving distance study mentioned first. Scratch women play at 84% of scratch men, and bogey women play at 75% of bogey men.

As you can see, 150 is 60% of 250. So if you have 6500 yard tees for your longer men, it suggests 3900 yard tees for your shorter men.

If you use the 70% given in the first stat, you might end up with 3600 yard tees on your 6500 yard course.

Hope these numbers help.

   Garland,
Can't see those numbers helping, nor 3900 or 3600 yd tees...  maybe for an executive course on the back 40...  can't be proportional to driving distances, needs some more variables and higher functions

You don't think the woman's 7 iron shot is near the same proportion to the man's 7 iron shot as the respective drives are? Perhaps you can get a job with Mike Whan at the USGA, and help straighten them out on a few things. They seem to think the proportions are near the same. Or, at least that is what I would surmise given the entries in the handicap table for categorizing scratch, bogey, men, and women maintain similar proportions for approach shots.

Furthermore, the point of saying "hope these numbers help" is to illustrate what I have not seen anyone enumerate on this website, and thereby gives them some input to help clarify their thinking on the matter.

RTJ built runway tees. We have hogsback features of golf courses. Perhaps every golf hole should have a relatively flat topped hogsback extending from where the back tee markers are placed to where the front tee markers are placed in a ribbon tee fashion. The top doesn't have to be totally flat. Let it slope off a little on each side, and let golfers choose the desired slope of where they play their tee ball from. Generally set the markers full width to let players choose to what shape shot they want help with. For top level golf, pull a Pete Dye on them, and sometimes set the makers so they end up ball below their feet when the desired shot shape would be draw, etc.

[Mike Nuzzo]

And...if she has to walk a little along with me from the previous green to wherever the fairway cut starts, I'm not understanding the perceived harm there?

Mike,

Its the same basis that's been oft discussed here.

If you're building a course that's 7200 from the tips, its been the consensus on this site that if playing from the 6200 yard tees, then you shouldn't have to walk past all those longer tees, just to get to yours.  And I agree with that, given that 95% of the time, no one is using those tees anyways...

So the same logic is being applied here, why should people who want to play from 4500 yards have to walk past all those other tees to get to thiers...

I agree Kalen
The 2nd green at Nine Grand (opening one day) is closest to the forward 3rd tees. It does create a little walk back.
A zig-zag or triangular type routing may do this several times per round - depending on topography.
Peace

[Steve Lang]

  Garland,


All I see is you conflating the bogey women (instead of bogey men) 7 irons value to scratch men's drivers.to justify a general linear solution..  and some kind of nerve was touched...    

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,


All I see is you conflating the bogey women (instead of bogey men) 7 irons value to scratch men's drivers.to justify a general linear solution..  and some kind of nerve was touched...

I have no idea what logic, or lack thereof, that led you to post the above.

[Steve Lang]

Your quote;" As you can see, 150 is 60% of 250. So if you have 6500 yard tees for your longer men, it suggests 3900 yard tees for your shorter men."


Where did the 150 come from? .. forget the 7 iron comment

[Sean_A]

Kalen,
All I was saying and I think others were as well is most forward tees are a walk forward from the previous hole.  This is a walk they will have to make no matter what tees they elect to play on each hole that follows.  Worst case, they walk past the back tee and the middle tees until they get to the forward tee.  Best case they walk right to their tee off the previous green and everyone else walks backward.  By adding forward tees you are NOT adding any extra walking distance for forward tee players to their round.

But if we are talking about walking forward without pulling a club out of the bag for a few thousand yards in a round its hard for me take a design like this
as a solution to inviting women to play the game. We need to be much more clever than this and fully understand that mega tees doesn't do the job unless we give up on walking.

Ciao

[Garland Bayley]

Your quote;" As you can see, 150 is 60% of 250. So if you have 6500 yard tees for your longer men, it suggests 3900 yard tees for your shorter men."


Where did the 150 come from? .. forget the 7 iron comment

You could have pointed out the tyop. I of course meant to type women for the second reference. Sorry for the confusion.

[Garland Bayley]

My apologies to Jeff. I have seen him recommend 4200 yard tees here so often, I assumed that his link would be more of the same. Instead it turns out it was reasoning similar to mine about USGA values for scratch and bogey players, although not explicitly laying at least a portion of their scratch/bogey tables.

Jeff of course added PGA Tour driving of 295 yards to his comments beyond the 250 yard scratch and 200 yard bogey stats and also mentioned the women's stats. He decided to use 60% of PGA Tour yardage for the lower bound on the women's yardage!?!?

Jeff wrote, "The course measures 7,207 yards, 6,772 yards, 6,147 yards and 5,324 yards (!?!?) for forward tees. The first three yardages are popular yardages for the 290-, 255- and 225-yard drivers, which are typical distances by low-, mid- and higher-handicappers." If he were using a true proportional adjustment his tees shorter than 7207 should be 6337, 5592,
and 4722. If you allow his 255 yard drivers to be essentially the same as the USGA scratch golfers, then they should be playing the 6337 yardage, and using the USGA proportion of 60% for bogey women golfers vs scratch men golfers, you get bogey women golfers needing tees at 3802. If you use the true driving distance difference (70%) measured in the USGA study then your bogey women golfers need tees at 3549.

Clearly someone needs to do something about the poorly regulated equipment that has led to the vast differences in how far different types of individual are able to propel the ball.

Or, you can adopt the Olympia Fields model of trying to one up Medinah by building four golf courses instead of three. But, the four golf courses are for 1) 290 yard drivers, 2) 255 yard drivers, 3) 225 yard drivers, and 4) 180-200 yard drivers.
Each course has two sets of tees. One set for the men, and one set for the analogously talented women that suit each course.

If you have followed my writings on this website, then perhaps you are wondering what happened to they guy that has constantly argued against vast numbers of tee boxes on golf courses. Well, that guy has been going through this exercise to demonstrate the futility of trying to satisfy all golfers all the time to enable them all to have chances for birdies and eagles. I.e., the futility of chasing medal play as the model for golf going forward.

The match play model is more robust. No matter how long the hole is you can have a enjoyable match without dwelling on pars, birdies, and eagles. Besides having a course that makes you think strategically about attacking the hole, you have an opponent that is also making you think strategically about how to contend with how they are playing the hole.

[Mark_Fine]

Sean,
What do you propose?  There is no solution.  I can’t name a single course where by adding shorter tees the overall walk from the 1st tee to the final 18th green would be any longer.  Golfers who play the forward tees are used to walking forward without hitting a ball to get to their starting point.  It’s ok.

I still stand by my statement that adding more forward/shorter tees is one of the best things we can do for the game of golf. 

Most would be surprised how much more fun golfers have when they play from shorter distances.  Most don’t have that option because the tees don’t exist or their ego won’t allow them.  If we also change what we call these tees and how they are colored it will help as well.  As I said if there for example are only three sets of tees, very few men will ever play the forward tees even though they should.  The more options, the more they will move up to where they will have more fun playing. All others will move up as well and any golfer that wants a longer course will still have that option.

[Thomas Dai]

If we also change what we call these tees and how they are colored it will help as well.  As I said if there for example are only three sets of tees, very few men will ever play the forward tees even though they should.  The more options, the more they will move up to where they will have more fun playing. All others will move up as well and any golfer that wants a longer course will still have that option.

+1
‘Red’ coloured tee markers should be abolished and removed from courses. ‘Red’ tee markers have far too much of an association with women’s golf for many ego affected men to tee-off from their locations, which is what they frequently should be doing.
Atb

[Bryan Izatt]

Mike,


Back to the original post, you could visit your sister course, St Andrews Valley, to see how they've added forward tees.  They called them "Silver" and have set them at 4617 yards.  The tips are 7315 yards.  The good news is that they formalized the tees to, I hope, give the feeling to players who may use those tees, that they are not being pandered to by just sticking some blocks in the middle of the fairway.  The downside is that most are off to the side on the cart path side so they provide a slightly weird angle off the tee.


You could also get yourself over to Toronto Ladies in Thornhill - a course by ladies for ladies.  The original designer was Stanley Thompson, so it is architecturally sound.  With a maximum length of just over 6000 yards they also have a set of Purple tees that are at 3870 yards.


Or, if you want a post-COVID field trip, you could go to Bandon and Pacific Dunes where they have Royal Blue forward tees set at 3920 yards where the (usual) tips are 6633 yards.  These ones are set in the fairway, but it fits the overall ethos of the course which is less formalized than most.


I think it's funny that, for men, at least two tees are fine, and a lot of courses have 3 or 4 or 5 tees these days, but for ladies one tee is thought to be fine.  I have the good fortune to play with our ladies club champion from time to time.  She is tall, middle-aged and athletic, but not quite a scratch golfer. When we play she plays the same tees as I do and hits it about the same length I do (200-225 yards).  We have about the same experience on the course.  She had the existing ladies tees moved back on one of our courses because she felt the course rating was too low and it affected her handicap.


I also play frequently with my wife who is older, smaller and not athletic.  She likes the walk and playing for those occasional good shots that she hits and the sometimes pars and very rare birdies.  She drives the ball at most 80-100 yards total.  She can't play from even the original red tees as there are too many forced carries and long slogs of driver, 3 wood a number of times and then a wedge to the green.  It's been hard to get her to go to the beginning of the fairways or the other side of forced carries to tee off.  Even with her limited golfing abilities her ego tells her that teeing off from anywhere not set with tee blocks is not "right" or within the rules.  She doesn't like to be pandered to. 


So there you have two very different women players playing the same course - more than one forward tee makes sense.  To me the more forward tees should be more formalized to show the players that play there that they are considered in the setup of the course, not that they are some afterthought by throwing some tee blocks out in the fairway.

[Garland Bayley]

...
I think it's funny that, for men, at least two tees are fine, and a lot of courses have 3 or 4 or 5 tees these days, but for ladies one tee is thought to be fine. ... hits it about the same length I do (200-225 yards). ...

... She drives the ball at most 80-100 yards total.  She can't play from even the original red tees as there are too many forced carries ...

... To me the more forward tees should be more formalized to show the players that play there that they are considered in the setup of the course, not that they are some afterthought by throwing some tee blocks out in the fairway.

As Bryan points out, there is an inequity in course set up for men and women. The men get to move forward multiple sets of tees, the women seldom more than one set of tees.

Ah, the futility of make a course suitable for all in medal play.

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