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 !
