The Fallacy Of Gold Tees

[WillieT]

This conversation caused me to pull the card from the local club I play most often.  The "difference" from golds (senior) to whites (regular) varies from around 10yds on par 3's to 40-50 on par 5's.  This course was a built in 1969 and I don't think there were golds back then.  Some of the tee boxes have the golds just ahead of the whites while others are truly standalone.  I tend to play based on the "yardage" chart and which set of tees come closest to the 6,000 - 6,200 mark.  Works for me as that distance is about max for me making GIR's.   

[Utopia17]

Best solution for playing enjoyable golf is to play from tees appropriate to your driving distance. This is often double your 9 iron.  If your driving distance is say 225 yards, that’s 20% less than the PGA average of 290 yards. So your tee should be 20% further forward than the usual most used back tee...often around 6600 yards. Find the tee that is closest to 1320 yards less...say 5300 yards. 
Playing from those tees should give you the same opportunity to reach greens in regulation as the longer drivers/Pros/ lowest handicappers. Check on Par Threes...you should be using a similar club to them. Now you are testing your SKILL against them, eliminating their superior driving distance. The course rating from any forward tee is proportionately less than the back tees and handicaps are adjusted accordingly.

You will soon discover some holes are still too long, because most course designers don’t take separation seriously often from ignorance ..holes vary from the 20% difference.. Proportional tee separation is the answer but I have yet to find this elusive rarity. ( Sometimes natural topography interferes ). 
  My son and I have driving distances mentioned above. We play the same clubs on many holes for the shots to the green, except for 6 holes which are not in proportion ...I don’t get enough “start”.(thanks to the ‘’’’ designer”’)

, and usually lose those holes. 
‘When we use the same tees, further back for me , I’m at a big disadvantage and find it much less enjoyable. 
‘By adding the rating difference of 5 shots to my score when I play of the forward tee, that gives us the gross winner. Then bring in the handicaps and we discover who won the net. Two chances to win or lose the match and so much more fun than playing off the same tee.

We have a new course in Auckland which hosted a full LPGA tour event a year after opening two years ago and was won by Brooke Henderson. They used all of our five tees over different days and conditions on many holes and that provided different challenges for them. Total yardage for each round was around 6200 yards. The LPGA driving distance average is 250 yards (Lydia Ko) so it was clear which tees suited them the best. They seldom used the back tees but most of our men’s club players drive less than 250 yards, yet they persist in playing them, and score more two overs than pars !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[tehuti]

The courses I play usually only have blue/white/red. A few of them are well over 6,600 yards from the white and the long par 4s and par 5s are just too long for me.

I need to stick to courses between 5,200 to 5,800 if I have any hopes of breaking 100.

 

 

[DrvFrShow]

I can still hit my driver a decent distance, but who knows this year? When my back is feeling good I can hit it. When my back is hurting... well... It doesn't go very far. I usually pick my tees by the par 3s. If there are any over 170 yds, I pick the shorter tees.

 

[rvanculin]

The best way method I have found for determining what tee you should play is to take your 5i carry distance and multiply it by 36. If you hit your 5 iron 165 yards: 165 x 36 = 5,940 yards. Whenever I play a course using this method to pick the tees, I almost always use every club in my bag, rather than hitting wedge or hybrid into every par 3 and 4.

Also, there is no mention of 'senior' or 'ladies' tees in the USGA rules or handicapping manual. Just play the tees that allow you to reach the par 4's and 3's in regulation.

I also would say if you play a course and the hazards never come into play, you are playing too short or too long.

[WillieT]

Of late, I have moved to the gold tees and found that my drives on 4's are landing between the 150 and 100 yd markers and likewise with 5's the second shot landing there.  It keeps the hazards in play as I do find the occasional bunker/water hazard.  I really like playing from the whites - so it really depends on the course design as some "whites" play almost the same other's "golds".   

 

[RickK]

Color of the tees does not mean a lot to me (almost 74 years old).  It really has to do with yardage from the various set of tees at any given course.  I took a look at 8 courses that I play fairly regularly and here are the yardages for what is considered to be the Senior tees...from shortest to longest.  5540, 5614, 5650, 5682, 5855, 6035, 6120, 6189.  So, as you can see there is about 650 yards total length difference between the shortest course and the longest course from the senior tees.  At my age, I am comfortable playing up to around 6300 yards.  Of course, the length of the individual holes has a lot to do with it.  The shortest course I listed, 5540, plays to about 6000 yards from the regular (green in color) tees.  When I play there, I typically play the green or regular tees.  

I did not list my home course in those yardages.  My home course is 6529 from the white (regular) tees and 6029 from the gold (senior) tees.  From the white tees, there are 3 holes that due to penalty areas (water you need to carry) that I have to lay up on unless I get lucky and just flat crush a drive (does not happen often these days).  But, I can still play from the whites if I am just careful.  Just means I hit a lot of hybrids into greens instead of irons.  Last week, shot 79 from the whites with 1 ball OB for the round.  That is pretty dang good for me.  It is just not as much fun playing 6500+ yardage so I generally play the gold tees with the rest of the seniors.