switching tee boxes

[mirv]

I played a round with friends today, and it was suggested that we play a game where we switch tee boxes throughout the round based on how you score on the previous hole.  If you make a par or better, you move back one tee box.  If you make a bogey or worse, you move forward one tee box.  Everyone started on the ladies tees on hole 1, and by the turn everyone was on a different tee box.  It really was quite a bit of fun and let us see some new views of the course.  My friend noted that "it kind of naturally handicaps you a bit through the round," which seemed a fairly accurate assessment.  Normally he would shoot 95ish from the white tees on this particular course, and today he shot 83.  My score didn't change much since I would normally play the tips anyway, and that was where I found myself spending most of the round (wound up with an 80 after falling apart on the last hole).  If you're looking for a way to spice up the game a little, I would suggest this little sub-game.

[JayMc]

That sounds like fun. My group usually plays all the way back or one tee up. We have five (or maybe six) sets of tees at our club. I've been looking for a reason to play the member or senior tees one day.

[Doctorfro]

Could be fun!  Can't post that score for handicap purposes though.

[sacm3bill]

Originally Posted by Doctorfro

Could be fun!  Can't post that score for handicap purposes though.

Actually, you can. See section 5.2/g of the USGA handicap manual: http://www.usga.org/Rule-Books/Handicap-System-Manual/Rule-05/ - you just need to add up the yardage for the tees you played and adjust it based on the yardage difference between that and the nearest rated set of tees, using the table in that link.  The primary purpose of this is to give you a slope and rating for a given set of unrated tees, but as it states in the above link, "This method may also be used if a player plays a combination of tees."

[Dormie1360]

We've used 5.2/g at our club from time to time, mainly when we need to change a couple of tees for abnormal course conditions for a tournament, or we need to get off a tee for maintenance reasons.  If you did this a lot however you do run the risk of giving yourself an index that would be off.

A while back I had the opportunity to walk with  course raters when they last did our course.  You would not believe all that's involve.  Yardage is just one of many factors.  One of the things they do is measure out a certain yardage from a specific tee where a tee shot would land for both a scratch golfer and a bogey golfer.  I forget what the yardages are, I think it was 250 yds for scratch men.  At these landing areas they look at all kinds of things.  Fairway width, distance to trees, bunkers, OB, fairway pitch, distance to green, etc.  It's quite possible that landing areas from one tee could be quite a bit different than another, which would effect the difficulty of the hole.  Also, tee shot carries over hazards can be quite different and really affect the slope difficulty for a bogey golfer.

Anyway, sacm3bill is correct and 5.2/g is good to know.  If your club doesn't have the handicap manual to look this up, it's on line at USGA.org in their handicap section.   If it were me, however, and I was changing a lot of tees, I probably wouldn't post it, or least not do it more than a couple of times during a 20 hole posting cycle, for the reasons I talked about.

[GaijinGolfer]

That definetly does sound fun.  I do something similar to that if Im struggling with my swing.  If my swing is off and Im making bogey or worse on every hole, I will move forward 1 tee box just so that Im not totally frustrated with my game.