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How do you determine what tees to play?

The yardages on the score cards are usually unreliable at the courses I have played. I don't have a GPS yet so I use the 100 and 150 yard marker and walk off paces to get my yardages. Not completely accurate but it works for me until I can get a GPS.
 
Rusty said:
The GPS yardage is almost always going to be shorter than the scorecard yardage, because the scorecard is not measured in straight line from tee to green (except on par 3s, of course). Even holes that you might not classify as a dogleg typically have a little bit of bend in the fairway. The scorecard measurement is based on a straght line to the bend and then another straight line to the center of the green. Add to that the fact that your GPS may be off a little at times, and you can get pretty variable distances.

I got my first GPS back in May. Up until then, I had been estimating my driver distances, although I was trying to take the dogleg into account. If I was 100 yards out on a 400 yard hole, I didn't just assume I hit a 300 yard drive....I always tried to factor in the dogleg and take off a few yards. Unfortunately, when I got my GPS I found out my estimates were not very good. I posted several times in the Cleveland Classic thread that I was getting 290 yard drives, and it turns out those drives were probably only 270 or so. They were still much longer drives than I was used to, but not as long as I thought.

I do try to keep up with my driver distances, but its just so I know what I need to work on in my game. If I'm 175 yards out, I would like to know if I hit a weak drive, or if the hole is just playing longer than I thought, so the measurement is helpful. It also helps me compare drivers and shafts to know what kind of yardages I'm getting. I figure, even if my GPS is a little off, it is still useful for comparisons.
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Rusty thank you for your honesty in this post. Very nice to see you are able to actually track your driver distance
 
Esox said:
The worst are the lower end venues that offer the old 150 pole and that's it. Who knows when those were planted? Courses with the colored discs from 100, 150, and 200 seem a little more up to date.

Kevin
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I might risk taking this thread too far off topic, but how "old" are 150 yard poles? I admit I have not played much golf outside of the Southern US, but the first 150 yard poles I ever saw were in 1993. The colored discs in the fairways have been around for many decades. I would think the 150 poles would be more reliable....except my course uses poles that don't have a permanent base and are easily relocated, so I don't know if the grounds crew is putting them in the right spot.
 
my home course is pretty accurate from the 100 and 200 yard markers (centre of fairway), but from the tees can by up to 10 yards off. Worse is the dogleg holes where the 2 150 yd markers (on either side of the fairway) can be well off. On 2 holes for sure, if I'm closer to one side than the other I always club down at least 1.
 
Rusty said:
I might risk taking this thread too far off topic, but how "old" are 150 yard poles? I admit I have not played much golf outside of the Southern US, but the first 150 yard poles I ever saw were in 1993. The colored discs in the fairways have been around for many decades. I would think the 150 poles would be more reliable....except my course uses poles that don't have a permanent base and are easily relocated, so I don't know if the grounds crew is putting them in the right spot.
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It's the opposite here in WI at a lot of places.

Kevin
 
oiler3535 said:
my home course is pretty accurate from the 100 and 200 yard markers (centre of fairway), but from the tees can by up to 10 yards off. Worse is the dogleg holes where the 2 150 yd markers (on either side of the fairway) can be well off. On 2 holes for sure, if I'm closer to one side than the other I always club down at least 1.
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This is often, again, a problem of how the hole is measured. At some courses, the discs or poles or other markers at 100, 150, 200 are measured the same way the hole is measured - going around the bend rather than a straight line to the hole. So, if a bit of a dogleg occurs closer to the hole than those measurements, then your actual distance can be significantly off.

I also don't trust the markers on the sides of the holes (say, 150 markers on trees or cart paths or edges of the fairways). Are these measured from the marker, or from the fairway exactly between them? If from the middle of the fairway between them, then the markers themselves will be more than 150 yards. If from the actual marker, then the point between could be significantly less than 150.

Again, I like modern technology. A quick shoot with my range finder and I know the actual answer.

Skipped off the pond using Tapatalk
 
The scorecard is a no-go for me. The yardages change frequently and always rely on a laser or my skycaddie to give me yardages to features. At my home course I rarely use the card and just play. I know it so well, it almost doesn't matter what the yardages say.
 
I never go off of the scorecard yardages because the courses around here regularly move their tee boxes back and forward. I always rely on my GolfShot GPS on my S3 for yardages.
 
Use the range finder to shoot to the 150 marker stick, if there is one. Other than that, use my smart phone app to get some idea as far as guestimate on how far to hit my first shot to set up for my second shot.

score card yardage gives you general idea as to what the overall distance is like, but it shouldn't be used as absolute. Tee markers do move around depending on many factors of the tee box area, however, sometime you can get some idea as to the distance from the tee box yardage markers.

this is like distance of your driver...where the score card show the hole to be playing 450 yards, however, course put the tee box where it plays more like 410. 40 yards difference. One would hit the driver to 170 area, thinking that he had 280 yard drive, however, it is 240 yard drive. Don't get fooled by the scorecard yardage.
 
TC said:
I don't really care about how far I hit the ball to be honest. I can't tell you the last time i measured the distance of a drive. I shoot flags with a range finder and am more concerned about what iron I'm hitting to it.
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I am the same way (i.e. more concerned about the distance I have with my irons into the green)... But sometimes when I just rip a drive, I want to know what that distance was. With that said, I found it about 50-50 on where the scorecard yardages are accurate (i.e. within 3 yards). I was at a course several weeks ago, and the marked yardages were always about 10-15 yards off. I got so concerned, I had my playing partner use his laser as well to make sure it wasn't my laser acting up.
 
I was wondering the same thing recently. My local course I think the yardages are off on several of the holes. Some seem much longer and some seem shorter than the scorecard yardages. For example, on 1, scorecard says 362, but a 3 wood usually gets me to 100 yards plus or minus and I know I can’t hit a 3 wood 262. 2 says 307, and a 3 wood of the tee gets me to the same 100 yards or so. I think 2 is close as based on par 3s I can carry 3 wood 200 yards. 3 is a par 5 that says 462, and I have tried to get there in 2 a few times when I felt I crushed the drive, but most times I’m not even close. I’m usually driver, 4h or 5 iron or something, to 100 yards for a wedge 3[SUP]rd[/SUP], which means it is more like 500 yards.
I don’t have a range finder, but would like to have one just once to try and see what the actual yardages are. One the plus side, yardage to green seems to be correct, or consistent at the least.
 
A friend of mine loves to tell me about his 6800 yard home course and the 300 yard drives he's hitting, and doesn't want to hear me tell him he's playing a 6200 yard course and hitting the ball 250 yards, because the scorecards are measured with a distance wheel from the back of the tee boxes (which are literally never ever used there).

My home course is way off too. Scorecard says like 5800, it's really like 5000.
 
I think this is good reason to at least have a gps or phone app with gps to get measurement from where you are teeing off to the center of the green. Using phone app, this will automatically tell you distance to the center of the green. Then compare this to the scorecard to see how much it is off.
 
I don't know I feel about courses getting all fancy with their tee names. what ever happened to red-white-blue-black?
Obviously the easy answer is you just look a the yardage, rating and slope to figure out where you want to/should play from and who cares what their names are. Although I would say that there are many golfers who do not pay a great deal of attention to those things or even take the time to learn what the rating/slope means and how you factor that in to you decision.
Not all courses are designed the same, not all courses are meant to be played the same. So say you have a guy who's always played the whites in his area of 5, 6, however many courses that he usually plays. Maybe one course is short and the whites are 5900 yards, another course the whites are 6200 yards and that's just what he plays. Now he goes to a fancy course with 6 different tees all named different uniquely, there's a 5800 yard tee, a 61000, 63000, 6500. This guy doesn't know or understand rating and slope so he can't use that to figure out where to play from, so now what does he do?

I don't know how often this scenerio plays out, but I imagine it does and I just don't know if it has to. Granted even if you keep a handicap, because of the slope and rating everything gets adjusted relatively so you can never really play from the "wrong" set of tees, and another easy answer if you don't understand these things and your confused on what tee to play from there are course employees who can guide your decision; thus it's not a problem that is ever really a problem, but i don't know. I think it can unnecessarily complicate things because as I said not all courses are designed equally. The whites at one course could be 5900 yards, the whites at another course could be 6100 or possibly even 6300 yards because that course is designed to play longer. When you changes the names I think it messes with that. With the uniform label of "whites", "blues", etc, it is clear that one set of tee's at said course is designed to correllate with that set of tees at another course.

or am I making much ado about nothing?
 
CJ,

to be honest I look mostly at total yardage and distances of the Par 3s when deciding which tee box to play. Names, colors, etc mean nothing to me and I don't focus on slope or course rating either.
 
cj3ap2 said:
I don't know I feel about courses getting all fancy with their tee names. what ever happened to red-white-blue-black?
Obviously the easy answer is you just look a the yardage, rating and slope to figure out where you want to/should play from and who cares what their names are. Although I would say that there are many golfers who do not pay a great deal of attention to those things or even take the time to learn what the rating/slope means and how you factor that in to you decision.
Not all courses are designed the same, not all courses are meant to be played the same. So say you have a guy who's always played the whites in his area of 5, 6, however many courses that he usually plays. Maybe one course is short and the whites are 5900 yards, another course the whites are 6200 yards and that's just what he plays. Now he goes to a fancy course with 6 different tees all named different uniquely, there's a 5800 yard tee, a 61000, 63000, 6500. This guy doesn't know or understand rating and slope so he can't use that to figure out where to play from, so now what does he do?

I don't know how often this scenerio plays out, but I imagine it does and I just don't know if it has to. Granted even if you keep a handicap, because of the slope and rating everything gets adjusted relatively so you can never really play from the "wrong" set of tees, and another easy answer if you don't understand these things and your confused on what tee to play from there are course employees who can guide your decision; thus it's not a problem that is ever really a problem, but i don't know. I think it can unnecessarily complicate things because as I said not all courses are designed equally. The whites at one course could be 5900 yards, the whites at another course could be 6100 or possibly even 6300 yards because that course is designed to play longer. When you changes the names I think it messes with that. With the uniform label of "whites", "blues", etc, it is clear that one set of tee's at said course is designed to correllate with that set of tees at another course.

or am I making much ado about nothing?
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all I know is I aint playing those 61,000 yard tees :alien:
 
I find moving from the white to the blue tees at my local courses usually adds about 4 strokes...all on the par 3's. I have a helluva time sticking a 190 yard shot on the green, and the hazards at the par3 greens are just killer.
 
cj: I moved your and Taylor's posts here because it's good discussion and can be built on here.


I kind of choose by a combination, slope, yards and par 3 yardage. I like to keep it under 130 slope, and 6000 to 6300 yards and par 3's where I don't need to use a wood on.
 
I shoot for 6,000 yards
 
I prefer to play 6800-7000 yards. The par 3's are usually brutal but I find myself with much more comfortable distances into par 4's.
 
TripleBogieTim said:
all I know is I aint playing those 61,000 yard tees :alien:
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moon golf man.


I decide what tees i'm going to play based on yardages on the card. I look for 6000-61000 and that's where I play from. I don't pay no mind to the slope or rating because my issue is based off of how far I hit it. my home course I play is about 6000 yards (they have not updated the yardages in quite sometime and don't not actually have yardage of the blues or whites on the card. it's a 9 hole course so they have blue-white yardage combined at something like 6150, so I just figure the whites are 6100, the blues are 6200).

The thing that gets me i'm accustomed to the idea that courses are designed to play different yardages. the course in my area, as I mentioned in my initial post, some are 59, 60, 61. I went to a course a nice course a few years ago that did not have the traditional tee layout. They have tournament(7000)-championship(6500)-ridge(6100)-resort(5700)-forward(5200). I assumed counting from the back tees it went blue-white, meaning the 6500 yard tees were meant to be the whites. Assumed that the course was designed to be longer and more challenging so that's where I played from.
In recent years I have learned much more about understanding golf courses and things of this nature so now when I play that course I know to play the ridge 6100 yard tees because those are actually designed to be the whites, but if you didn't know and you didn't look into it, how would you know?
 
I find the tips and back up 10 yards.. It's only fair to the course. Really I usually just play the middle tees. Where ever I play.
 
I typically play with the same person, and while I'm a pretty average hitter, he's pretty long. So, he typically stops us at the blue tees (or on some courses, whatever color is in front of the tips). Being a 19-handicap, I should probably be playing the whites, but it takes extra time to play two tees and I do have the length for the blues, so I just play the blues too. Additionally, since he's a better golfer than me and I'm always trying to beat him, I don't think beating him from the whites would really be a win.
 
I play from wherever my group is playing from. If I am by myself, I'll play from the back tees.
 
Whatever the regular Men's tees are, for the most part. If they've got 12 sets I ask the starter, if they don't have a starter...odds are there's front/middle/back at most and I'll play middle or back, whatever the folks I'm playing with want.

I get overmatched on occasion, but I just try to keep up and take my pounding.
 
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