Choosing the right tee box

[dhc1]

I'm about to get into a discussion about which tees to use for my annual buddy golf trip (to Kohler, this year).

Every year, we debate which tees to play with one group insisting on playing as far back as possible ("as God intended" is the phrase used).

I'd propose that the best tee box is the one that makes you think about what you hit off of the tee - taking out the driver 14 times isn't very strategic. for example, if there is a fairway bunker that is out 280-300 yards, it doesn't really impact me. Put it at 230-250 and now i've got a real choice to make.

I have a couple of questions/thoughts:

do we know what clubs the average PGA golfer hits on par 4s and 5s? the average approach shot is 162 yards, so i'd guess that is an 8/9 iron as compared to long wood like most people would have to from the tips.

I'd also note that pros go for the green on par 5s about half the time so perhaps a reasonable tee box is one where you could hit 1 or 2 par 5s in two with two good swings. I am less concerned with the yardage book distances but rather using google earth to get actual distances.

I'm less concerned about the score than i am about the experience and playing the course as the designer intended.

Make sense?

[gmbtempe]

I think you should play the tee's that fit your game based on driving and iron distances. If you hit it tour distance 310is on average the 7200-7500 makes sense, work back from there.

Its silly to me to play a tee box that you cant get to a green in two shots on a par four unless its a very rare hole on the card.

For me a 6700 yard course seems about right, I hit it 250-270 off the tee.

[Richie3Jack]

Tour average is about 293 yards.

I think you should play whatever tees you want to play. It's golf and it should be fun, not a torture chamber.






3JACK

[rohlio]

Jan 19, 2012 12:53:32 GMT -5 Richie3Jack said:

Tour average is about 293 yards.

I think you should play whatever tees you want to play. It's golf and it should be fun, not a torture chamber.






3JACK

Greg lives in Phoenix. His view of yardage and distance is skewed When I go down to the valley I can easily play courses in the 6700-6900 range without ever feeling pressured for yardage. Here in the Northwest 6400 can be very long by comparison.

To the OP. here is the chart that Tee It forward made.

Driver Distance Recommended 18-Hole Yardage
275 6,700 – 6,900
250 6,200 – 6,400
225 5,800 – 6,000
200 5,200 – 5,400
175 4,400 – 4,600
150 3,500 – 3,700
125 2,800 – 3,000
100 2,100 – 2,30

I would use that along with the average driving distance of the group.

I only played Kohler once and to my memory it didn't play nearly as hard and fast and linksy as Bandon does so I would stick with the chart.

[gmbtempe]

Tour distances themselves are a bit misleading in some cases. I played TPC the week before the Phx Open from the back tees and I never felt distance challenged because I got so much roll, ball hits at 240 and runs to 280, well even a 460 yard hole is not that long.

The par 3's though on 8 and 11 felt longer because they were 200+ yards to small targets.

[rohlio]

Jan 19, 2012 12:17:25 GMT -5 dhc1 said:

I'm less concerned about the score than i am about the experience and playing the course as the designer intended.

Make sense?

Any good architect would think about the type of shot he imagines being played to the green and the landing zone in the fairway that makes that shot possible. If you are playing the course from the tips and your drives are not long enough to put you into this zone you are not playing the course as the designer intended.

For example say there is a hole that is 420 from the tips and 370 from the front tees. The green however is designed in such a way that approach shots must be hit high and land relatively soft with trouble in front and hill in back that moves shots hit long very far away from the hole. The designer clearly intends this green be hit with a high lofted iron shot; how do we know that? Because He put trouble in front so you can't land it short and bounce it in, and he put trouble in the back such that if you carry it to the green but without sufficient trajectory and spin to stop it the ball will roll off the back down a hill.

So in this scenario if you drive the ball 220 yards then you probably at best hit your 3 wood 200 yards of carry. If you play the tips this is a par 5 for you, simply because you will not be able to hit a 3 wood that holds the green. If you play from 370 your drive leaves you 150 yards and you will have a mid iron approach as the designer intended.

[Richie3Jack]

Very true. Watching the ToC in Hawaii, they said the average roll time on one hole was 22 seconds.

Florida depends upon the season.

January - May = max roll
October - December = min roll

From May until October it pretty much rains at least once a day. But, it gets so hot here that it can dry up in a hurry. So sometimes you can play mid-afternoon after it poured the previous day and the ground can be fairly dry out. Whereas somebody that plays a couple of hours after you may get hit by a 30 minute storm of hell, fire and brimstone and be swamped. Also, if it doesn't rain in 2-3 days in the summer, that's when the ground gets as hard as a rock.

My parents live in The Villages which is about 1 hour from my home and the rain accumulation between there and my home is like 2 different worlds.





3JACK

[dhc1]

thanks for the comments. Generally, how many par 5s are reachable in two for you? How many par 4s are you hitting 7 iron or less from?

[rohlio]

I think the par 5 thing is a sketchy metric. I f half the pros go for every par 5 in 2 and half go for 0 then that would still mean 50% of the time the pros go for the green in two.

To answer the question directly it depends on the course. I have some courses where I have never been on any of the par 5's in two. Some courses where I can hit them all but generally only go for 3/4.

A better way for me to tell if I am at the right distance is how many times I have to hit more than a 5 iron after a good drive on a par 4. I enjoy courses where this happens at least twice and no more than 4 times (1.5 per nine seems a good amount).

I also tend to measure which tees I want to play from the par 3 yardages. I play a course regularly where from the blues the shortest par 3 is 195 yards with the longest at 225. That just is not any fun to me.

[mchepp]

Personally I like John Erickson's definition. He wants you to hit equal number of short, mid, and long irons in your round. The theory is that there will be 12 par 4's and it should be split evenly among the 12 and then on the par 3's each on should be one of each.

Par 5's can be reachable but must be done with a wood.

This way it tests your whole bag.

[tightdraw]

I think these are all helpful thoughts. I have a slightly different approach, but to apply it I have to play the course several times to get to know it. I ask myself this question: what is the architect's plan for protecting par. That's very different on a Donald Ross course than it is on a Tillinghast course. I want to play the course from the point of view of the challenge the architect had in mind. Of course many courses are designed without any thought at all about how to protect par. Last week I played two Donald Ross courses here in Miami: the Biltmore and the Miami Beach Golf Club. The latter maintained the class Ross design even though it was reworked byArthur Hills. Every greeen was crowned and there were collection areas everywhere. I played from the blues at around 6400 yds and it was really hard to score for me because I rarely hit approaches to desirable parts of the green. on the other hand I could play a Tillinghast course at 6700 yds because i don't hit it far enough to get into trouble and i am accurate enough with every club to hit the big greens most of the time. The reason I love Mackenzie as an architect is that the courses are challenging for par at every distance and I don't care how good a golfer you are.
Kohler is a Dye set up right? Well i would choose what tees to play by thinking about Dye courses. Well in any case, that's one way I think about it. Frankly sometimes I play a course from a variety of tees. I will mix up the par 3s mostly because I find that in many modern courses, the par 3s from the blues are too similar and too long