I think it is almost impossible to set up courses so they can be played 'in regulation' by super senior women. I remember when I was a teenager playing with my dad at his then club, Bradley Hall in West Yorkshire. The second hole was a par three, 117 yards from the back tee (102 from the red tee, I just checked), steeply uphill to a severe two tier green cut into the hillside, with three deep bunkers in front of the green (see [size=78%]http://www.bradleyhallgolf.co.uk/page.aspx?pid=64934[/size]). I once watched a group of senior women play the hole. To a woman, they hit a wooden club short of the bunkers and pitched over them. Given the slope you would probably have had to have a tee at thirty or forty yards to ensure they could all reach in one.
I think you and Ben are right about the difficulty of designing with the senior ladies in mind. And yet they are some of the most courteous and reliable customers/members a course could hope for. And no less deserving of an exciting variety of experiences that more typical distance golfers have available. I do not know the answer here.
The thing is, even as a proponent of short tees, I find Adam's example a completely acceptable situation. There's no reason for them to expect to reach that green in one shot. But extend that to a much longer hole, things become silly, IMHO.
I truly don't think the goal should be more and more tees, despite the success of the Longleaf System that has seven sets of tees and five combo sets for a total of 12 options. See the card
here.
But I I'm 75.9 years old and my wife is four days younger than me. We are both VERY short hitters at this point, but we love to play, and we love good golf courses. I rarely hit a tee shot over 170, and mostly 155-160. She's 30 yards shorter.
We don't 'expect" to be on any greens in regulation, even from the length of course we prefer. But we just played in a Greensomes at Nairn Dunbar where she played from 5700 yards and I played 6700, as required for the comp. The par four fifth is 438 from the white tees and 400 from the green tees where she teed off.
In greensomes, hitting about half the shots, it's not so bad, other than the score. But playing our own ball at that distance is pure drudgery. So when we played it again on our own ball, I played green @5746 and she played Blue @ 5467. WE both managed to break 100.
If I play ~5000 yards in the US or ~5500 on linksland, I can get in the area of the green in regulation, and try to get up and down for a par. Which makes a huge difference in how much fun the game is and how much my old body gets beat up by the game.
If it were up to me there'd be no more than four sets of tees at 4000, 5000, 6000 and 7000. Then put three combo sets on the card. Hell, 4500, 5500, and 6500 with two combo sets would work for 99% of golfers. As long as there aren't any 100+ yard carries off the shortest tees.