combo tees

[Hacker James]

It is probably not uncommon, but I noticed on a scorecard at a course I had not been before, that several of the tees are marked  Black/Blue Combo or Blue/White Combo in addition to White. The combo tees share the same yardage. I guess it will make more sense when I actually play. I just had not seen it before.

[DaveP043]

I've seen it a few times, and it does make sense.   Its a nice way to make a rated set of tees at a yardage between two previously established tees.  For instance, at the Newport Cup at Moon Valley, the Blue tees were 6584 yards, and the Black tees were 7216 yards.  We played the Blue/Black combo, which played to 7011 yards.  Essentially, we played the shorter Blue tees on five of the longest par-4 holes, and the rest from the Black tees.  If you look at the scorecard (http://www.moonvalleycc.com/golf/emailer2020/img/moonvalleycc/MVCC-Scorecard.pdf)

you'll see a little arrow pointing up or down, to show which tee box to play from.

Many newer courses are built with lots of tee boxes, but older courses may have only 3 or 4, with a big yardage difference between them.  Combo tee ratings can give the course a bit more flexibility in providing an appropriate challenge to a wider variety of golfers.  For the folks who play a lot of rounds at one course, they can vary their choice of tees from day to day to get a bit more variety on a single course.

[Chilli Dipper]

A lot of courses where I have seen combo tees call them "players," "tournament," or "member" tees, because those are the tees used for club competitions. Most often, they exist to make a 6200-6300 yardage where the blues are over 6500 yards, and the whites are about 6000. In fact, you can see that on the scorecard @DaveP043 linked to above.

[Hacker James]

Interesting. I should probably stick to Gold however, vanity pride not-with-standing.

[DaveP043]

6 minutes ago, Hacker James said:

Interesting. I should probably stick to Gold however, vanity pride not-with-standing.

Yeah, I would probably have chosen the Blue tees at Moon Valley if I was just playing a casual round.  However, for the Newport Cup I was one of the shorter hitters, and the choice to play a longer set of tees seemed to make it appropriately challenging for the field as a whole.

[imsys0042]

My former home course had this.   They had:

Gold  (back)

Blue (longer men's tees)

White (shorter men's tees)

Silver (Senior)

And then:

Gold / Blue

Blue / White

White / Silver

 

Each of those combos would take what was considered to be the 9 easier holes of the 18 and put them at the back tees so that it was graduated in difficulty.   Also, it was a great way to play if you were a shorter hitter because you still added/deleted some length but the course wasn't completely different for you.

[TronCarter]

My course does this, I think it makes a lot of sense.

[DeadMan]

I think all courses should do this. It gives people more options for tee boxes without having to maintain another set of tee boxes.

I think the handicap manual has a way for clubs to rate combo tees, as well. My home course doesn't have combo tees, but our men's club had a combo tee tournament that was rated and entered into our handicaps. They said there was a way to set it up.

[DaveP043]

25 minutes ago, DeadMan said:

I think all courses should do this. It gives people more options for tee boxes without having to maintain another set of tee boxes.

I think the handicap manual has a way for clubs to rate combo tees, as well. My home course doesn't have combo tees, but our men's club had a combo tee tournament that was rated and entered into our handicaps. They said there was a way to set it up.

I believe it should be done when a course is rated (or re-rated).  As I understand it, each hole is rated individually from each tee, and the ratings are combined to make the various 9 and 18 hole ratings.  It would seem to be a simple matter to combine a specific group of white tee hole ratings with the opposing number of blue tee hole ratings to be a white/blue composite rating, but I don't know how long those individual hole ratings are kept on file.  I know @iacas does course ratings, I hope he can provide more accurate information than my guesswork.

[Hacker James]

trying to get a handle on this. I am looking at the scorecard from Arrowood, and the tees designated blue/white combo have the same yardage as the solid blues of course, but the slope and rating differ.  example: White 68.5/125  Blue/white 69.5/128 Blue 70.5/131. I guess that makes it fair overall.  Hope this scan worked, if not I will try to copy and paste if any still interested.

 

[DaveP043]

3 minutes ago, Hacker James said:

trying to get a handle on this. I am looking at the scorecard from Arrowood, and the tees designated blue/white combo have the same yardage as the solid blues of course, but the slope and rating differ.  example: White 68.5/125  Blue/white 69.5/128 Blue 70.5/131. I guess that makes it fair overall

 

On the back nine, you play 12, 14, 16, and 18 from the white tees, the rest of them from the blue tees.

[Hacker James]

Oh OK, I get it.  At last the scan came partially through. I believe they even have the actual tee markers on those holes in two colors.

[Hacker James]

2 hours ago, Hacker James said:

trying to get a handle on this. I am looking at the scorecard from Arrowood, and the tees designated blue/white combo have the same yardage as the solid blues of course, but the slope and rating differ.  example: White 68.5/125  Blue/white 69.5/128 Blue 70.5/131. I guess that makes it fair overall.  Hope this scan worked, if not I will try to copy and paste if any still interested.

 

I see the scan attempt I did is no longer there. I was going to replace it with a better/complete scorecard, I guess the mods removed it,( no problem). It was only for clarity anyhow.

[DeadMan]

14 hours ago, DaveP043 said:

I believe it should be done when a course is rated (or re-rated).  As I understand it, each hole is rated individually from each tee, and the ratings are combined to make the various 9 and 18 hole ratings.  It would seem to be a simple matter to combine a specific group of white tee hole ratings with the opposing number of blue tee hole ratings to be a white/blue composite rating, but I don't know how long those individual hole ratings are kept on file.  I know @iacas does course ratings, I hope he can provide more accurate information than my guesswork.

I looked it up this morning because I was curious, and section 5(g) of the USGA handicap manual has a way to get course rating and slope from an unrated set of tees. It says this is what the tournament committee should use if it use a combination of tees. So there's a way to set up a competition with combination tees without having the course re-rated.

That also says it's not a substitute for a formal course rating and slope, so if you want to do a bunch of combination tee tournaments, you probably want the course rated for it.

[Hacker James]

right. As in the example I had provided before. The scorecard shows nine combo tees, four on the front, five on the back. There are ratings for all sets of tees, normal and combos.This makes for seven different rating/slope's. This particular course design was done by Ted Robinson, Jr.

[DaveP043]

1 hour ago, DeadMan said:

I looked it up this morning because I was curious, and section 5(g) of the USGA handicap manual has a way to get course rating and slope from an unrated set of tees. It says this is what the tournament committee should use if it use a combination of tees. So there's a way to set up a competition with combination tees without having the course re-rated.

That also says it's not a substitute for a formal course rating and slope, so if you want to do a bunch of combination tee tournaments, you probably want the course rated for it.

The bold is what I was thinking of, for a course that wanted to provide combo ratings on an every day basis.  As you mentioned, for an occasional competition, the USGA has a method for using the difference in distance to calculate a CR and slope for an unrated set of tees.  If it were me doing it, I'd run the calculation twice, once moving forward from the longer tees, once moving back from the shorter tees.  They should be close, but I'd probably average the two results for score entry.

[WUTiger]

Several of our courses have formal combo tees on the scorecard, and usually have separate course + slope ratings for the combos.

I played one course where we ended up using not very well defined combo tees. On a shortened par 5, we wanted to lay up short of the lagoon, so everyone hit a 4i or hybrid off the tee. BUT, the tee blocks were up 50 yards more than we thought - none of us had played the course before - and all four of us ended up in the water.

So, doublecheck your distances if a combo hole looks odd, doesn't seem to match the scorecard.