Courses without "real" senior tees.

[Buckeyebowman]

This is in reference to a local course I talked about in the thread "Resurrection of a beloved old course".

Well, this is an old course, built back in the 1920's, and it really doesn't have a proper set of senior tees. There are the blues, whites, and then well forward of them are the reds. To accommodate senior men, they have simply stuck a set of gold tee markers right behind the reds. I feel like I might as well wear a "skort"! This actually has the effect of making the course "too short" if that makes any sense. I don't like a course where every par 4 is a driver/wedge! I do like to hit some other clubs during a round.

This course in particular has faced some economic difficulties, so I'm not expecting much. But, how about finding a place where you mow the grass down short, and put the senior tees there? We played from the whites the other day, and this course is a lot to handle from there. For instance, you start right out on a 440 yard par 4! Might as well be a par 5. I had to play really good golf to score in the mid 80's.

There are other, more modern, courses around that give women a significant advantage even over the senior tees, as it should be! But the senior tees give a significant advantage over the whites.

I guess it's an ego thing, but I just don't want to play from the ladies tees!

[jsgolfer]

Maybe you can do a blend of the whites and the red tees so that you're playing the longer holes from the reds and the shorter holes from the whites.  We have two sets of blended tees at my course, other courses I play have done the same thing.

[David in FL]

38 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

 

I guess it's an ego thing, but I just don't want to play from the ladies tees!

Then don't.  Play whatever tees you want, ignore "par", and simply play 18 holes with the goal of playing to the best score possible.

 

[jsgolfer]

12 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

This is in reference to a local course I talked about in the thread "Resurrection of a beloved old course".

Well, this is an old course, built back in the 1920's, and it really doesn't have a proper set of senior tees. There are the blues, whites, and then well forward of them are the reds. To accommodate senior men, they have simply stuck a set of gold tee markers right behind the reds. I feel like I might as well wear a "skort"! This actually has the effect of making the course "too short" if that makes any sense. I don't like a course where every par 4 is a driver/wedge! I do like to hit some other clubs during a round.

This course in particular has faced some economic difficulties, so I'm not expecting much. But, how about finding a place where you mow the grass down short, and put the senior tees there? We played from the whites the other day, and this course is a lot to handle from there. For instance, you start right out on a 440 yard par 4! Might as well be a par 5. I had to play really good golf to score in the mid 80's.

There are other, more modern, courses around that give women a significant advantage even over the senior tees, as it should be! But the senior tees give a significant advantage over the whites.

I guess it's an ego thing, but I just don't want to play from the ladies tees!

You wouldn't want to play the senior tees at my course, they are ahead of the red tees.  

[dennyjones]

There is one of our foursome that is older and hits the ball shorter.   He is always requesting that we play from the senior tees and sometimes we do accommodate him, the problem is, there aren't enough senior tees and he won't play from the red tees.

[Patch]

We have a guy in our group that goes out with us 6 or 7 times a year. 81 years old he is, and he walks the course with us.  There are no senior tees at the courses we frequent. 

All he does is play from the very back of the red tees. Some holes, short par 3s,  don't even have red tees, and he plays from the tees we use. 

He is so happy just to be out there playing, taking, and giving smack with the rest of us. 

Sometimes, to save time, we give him a stroke per hole due to his shorter tee shots. Where ever his ball lands, off whatever tee we are using, is his starting point for that hole. If it's a forced carry he can't clear, his starting point is the beginning of the fairway. A game with in a game so to speak for him. 

[Kalnoky]

15 hours ago, jsgolfer said:

Maybe you can do a blend of the whites and the red tees so that you're playing the longer holes from the reds and the shorter holes from the whites.  We have two sets of blended tees at my course, other courses I play have done the same thing.

This is a great solution. We have a blended tee option at my home course and a lot of guys play it. It makes the easy holes harder and the hard holes easier. 

[mcanadiens]

Sort of the opposite at my home course. The City of Dayton's Kittyhawk places the gold tees 10 yards in front of the whites and it's already kind of a brutal place to start with. If memory serves Hawk's gold tees stretch 6200-plus and the Eagle is somewhere around 6500.

I still have 20 years to go before I can play them in competition, but when I'm playing casually, I'll generally go with the golds. That's plenty long enough for me.

[jsgolfer]

16 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

I guess it's an ego thing, but I just don't want to play from the ladies tees!

Don't call them the ladies tees, they are the red tees or forward tees.  My Dad picked up golf at 66, and he didn't want to play the red tees (ladies tees) either.  And my wife finally got him to move up to the reds last year and this year I got him to move to the greens and he loves it.  He's reaching more holes in regulation or at least being much closer and he has never had more fun playing. So he will probably play the forward tees from now on. 

[DeadMan]

16 minutes ago, jsgolfer said:

Don't call them the ladies tees, they are the red tees or forward tees.  My Dad picked up golf at 66, and he didn't want to play the red tees (ladies tees) either.  And my wife finally got him to move up to the reds last year and this year I got him to move to the greens and he loves it.  He's reaching more holes in regulation or at least being much closer and he has never had more fun playing. So he will probably play the forward tees from now on. 

Yeah, I really wish more golfers would bite the bullet and move up to the "ladies" tees. My father in law constantly hits driver-3 wood into greens when he plays, and that just looks like no fun for me. Honestly, I think renaming/recoloring the tees away from the ladies/red tees would help with this. It's a lot more manly to play the green or purple tees than the reds tees!

[Kalnoky]

2 minutes ago, jsgolfer said:

Don't call them the ladies tees, they are the red tees or forward tees.  My Dad picked up golf at 66, and he didn't want to play the red tees (ladies tees) either.  And my wife finally got him to move up to the reds last year and this year I got him to move to the greens and he loves it.  He's reaching more holes in regulation or at least being much closer and he has never had more fun playing. So he will probably play the forward tees from now on. 

All of our tees (yellow, green, green-orange, orange, and black) have a separate slope/rating for men and women. So there really aren't any "ladies" tees, since everyone plays (or should play) according to their ability. Some of the women collegiate golfers play and juniors play longer tees than the men.

There's no shame in playing forward. It brings the hazards into play at different lengths, which can be challenging. 

What is shameful is people playing from the back tees who have no business being there. I'm talking about the guys that never break 110 and never hit a single fairway. Usually it's younger guys who I see doing this. 

[chilepepper]

I don’t look at tee color to make a decision. I look at yardage. Besides if your keeping handicap it will be adjusted from whatever tees you choose on GHIN 

[allenc]

One thing many courses could easily do which might help is change the colors of their tees.  Red tees are associated with ladies in many minds so it might remove the stigma for at least some players.

One course I play sometimes, Tierra Rejada, does a good job with that. It has 5 well named tees and encourages the use of your proper tee.  From back to front they are colored Black, Blue, Burgundy, White, and Gold.  Their names are Professional, Championship, Tournament, Players, and Forward.  The names remind me of Starbucks drinks where even the smallest is called "Tall."  Who would feel embarrassed about playing the "Player's" tees?  I still think "Forward"might have a small stigma and should be renamed to something like "Casual".

[Marty2019]

18 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

This is in reference to a local course I talked about in the thread "Resurrection of a beloved old course".

Well, this is an old course, built back in the 1920's, and it really doesn't have a proper set of senior tees. There are the blues, whites, and then well forward of them are the reds. To accommodate senior men, they have simply stuck a set of gold tee markers right behind the reds. I feel like I might as well wear a "skort"! This actually has the effect of making the course "too short" if that makes any sense. I don't like a course where every par 4 is a driver/wedge! I do like to hit some other clubs during a round.

This course in particular has faced some economic difficulties, so I'm not expecting much. But, how about finding a place where you mow the grass down short, and put the senior tees there? We played from the whites the other day, and this course is a lot to handle from there. For instance, you start right out on a 440 yard par 4! Might as well be a par 5. I had to play really good golf to score in the mid 80's.

There are other, more modern, courses around that give women a significant advantage even over the senior tees, as it should be! But the senior tees give a significant advantage over the whites.

I guess it's an ego thing, but I just don't want to play from the ladies tees!

That's funny.   The same thing happened to us last week in North Carolina.   There were 4 of us, and the other 3 are some seriously bad hackers, so we decided to play from the senior tees.  But we would pull up to the yellow senior tees and they were almost always just a few feet behind the ladies' tees and sometimes a HUNDRED YARDS in front of the regular member "white" tees.   After a few holes of this, we started joking about how emasculated we were feeling and we went back to the white tees.  

It's ridiculous.   Senior tees need to be between the regular member tees and the ladies' tees.   No self-respecting man wants to tee off from the ladies' tees. 

[baller7345]

4 minutes ago, Marty2019 said:

It's ridiculous.   Senior tees need to be between the regular member tees and the ladies' tees.   No self-respecting man wants to tee off from the ladies' tees. 

Guess I'm not a self respecting man.  I'll play from whatever tees my playing partners want to play from whether that is from the tips or from the most forward set of tees (playing from our red tees can be a lot of fun as I can drive 3 par 4s that I normally wouldn't be able too and eagle putts are always fun even on really short par 5s).  I never understood the stigma behind what set of tees you play.  The only reason I could see getting onto someone for playing a certain tee is if they are clearly pushing themselves too far (slowing down the rest of the course due to playing too far back), otherwise play any set you want.

As for the OPs issue, that is definitely a problem especially if there is a large gap between the forward most tees and the other sets.  Mixing tees is probably the best bet in the short term, but it also might be worth bringing up to some of the people running the course as a possible change to make in the future.

[No Mulligans]

I wish the red tees never were named the "Womens tees", rather they are just another set of tees for anyone to play from.  Torrey pines has Black, Taupe, Green, Gold, Silver.  There aren't any Women tees, Men and women play anywhere you want (except the blacks is by permission only).

[Buckeyebowman]

Some thoughtful suggestions above, and thank for all the responses. Heck, it took me and my buddy a while to bite the bullet and move up to the senior tees. Again, an ego thing. But, once we did it a few times, we realized that golf was a lot more fun! It's nice to putt for the occasional birdie or even eagle rather than slug your brains out all day trying to scrape out bogies!

Our situation can become complicated, however. Once in a while we'll compete against my buddy's Sister and her girlfriend in a scramble. It's all for fun, and a post round drink, and we give them lots of strokes, but the ladies are very competitive! At one particular course the senior and ladies, umm,errrr, uhhh, the gold and red tees are usually separated by a fair margin. But, on a few holes, they are crammed together in the same tee box. On the first of these the ladies started chirping pretty good when they saw us pulling up. "Hey, where's our advantage here!" They had a point.

We beat them fairly handily on the front, so we had to give them more strokes on the back and play the white tees. The back nine is the harder of the two, and it ate our lunch that day! Guess who wound up buying drinks?

[MarvChamp]

On Sunday, October 15, 2017 at 6:34 PM, jsgolfer said:

Maybe you can do a blend of the whites and the red tees so that you're playing the longer holes from the reds and the shorter holes from the whites.  We have two sets of blended tees at my course, other courses I play have done the same thing.

Yes, this is good. Some of our local courses are doing it complete with slope and course rating. I have founD the course length fits the length the USGA guidelines says I should play based on average drive. I would think we could figure out the right blend to accomplish that, but I don't know about slope etc for HI purposes. -Marv