The “right” tees and what the pros hit

[iutodd]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the “right” tees are for me.  There was an article on this website not to long ago that said to take your 5 iron distance x 36 - which seemed very long. Then I was talking to a guy about it this past weekend and he said: “I think the right tees are when you have the same clubs in hand for your approach shot that the pros do.”  So I looked at some approach yardages on par fours for pro players during the playoffs - getting club data is harder but I think yardage is fairly instructive - obviously wind and temp and elevation changes play a role - I don’t have time to break all that down!
 

So I picked random guys that made the cut for each event and looked at their fourth round approach yardages using the shot link data on pgatour.com. For the Northern Trust I picked Adam Schenk - who is an Indiana native like me and finished T39.  Here are his par four approach yardages:

 

119

28

158

158

149

157

202

154

232

141

152

 

So we have two obvious outliers. 28 and 232.  However I think the overall point is that 9 of 11 approach shots were 158 yards or less.  
 

Next the BMW. Which played ridiculously tough. Let’s look at Carlos Ortiz who finished T25:

161

137

81

153

119

158

133

57

158

187

142

216

 

We see a remarkably similar pattern...10 of 12 approach shots were from 161 yards or less.

 

And now the Tour Championship.  Let’s go with Lanto Griffin who finished T18:
 

189

112

192

137

162

171

144

128

117

227

163

114

 

Another fairly similar pattern with 8 of 12 approaches 163 yards or less.  

So, this is random and obviously not that deep of a research project but it was pretty interesting as a thought exercise and I think the numbers are fairly compelling. How often do you have 8/9 iron or less in your hands on par 4 approach shots?  Because these three guys had them more than 75% of the time...

 

And I personally think that’s a good metric for finding the right tees for you: ~75% of approaches on par fours should be with 8 iron or less.  Ironically the guy I played with, who was in his 60s, was playing the same tees as me saying something like: “my ego won’t let me move up any more.”  He was often hitting hybrid/wood (and leaving it short) while I had short iron in my hands!  Who do you think had more fun and scored better?

[Warrior42111]

not a bad idea, around here I've seen courses do two things. Either have a driver carry distance and a recommended tee for that person. Or a handicap to tee recommendation.

 

Overall, I think it's a lot on the player themselves. Some like me are long but directionally challenged. So I could and have once in a while move up tees, ended up with a lot of long irons and woods off the tee and it was fun. on the other hand you have people my good friend for example is a bunter but accurate. we end up playing around 6200-6400 when playing and it works out for good matches between us.

 

Overall, you have too look at what works best for you

[MelloYello]

My SS is ~105-mph and so I'll generally select tees that are about 6,700-yds (+/-150). 

 

On my home course, there are plenty of opportunities to get a wedge into the green if you're driving it well. We've got three short par-4's as well as a couple others that can play short after a good drive. One of our par-5's is short enough that it's virtually always reachable after a good tee ball as well. 

 

I think a good course is really a mixed bag. You're going to get 7- or 8-iron after a decent tee ball, but maybe you can get a wedge after a great tee ball. Then again, you might have mid- or -long iron after a bad tee ball. 

 

It usually not so much whether you might get a club or two less into the green as it is whether or not you can keep it in play and recover from your driving mishaps. 

Edited September 8, 2020 by MelloYello

[PhilsFanDrew]

The game is much more fun when you have the potential to score.  The average handicap golfer is not going to be able to score if they are approaching the majority of their par 4s with long irons through FWs.    

Edited September 8, 2020 by PhilsFanDrew
update

[Naptime]

Sounds good to me.

[Sean2]

10 minutes ago, PhilsFanDrew said:

The game is much more fun when you have the potential to score.  The average handicap golfer is not going to be able to score if they are approaching the majority of their par 4s with long irons through FWs.    

I agree. I never thought it was much fun hitting fairway woods into par 4's, which is why play tees appropriate for my game. 

[smoky25]

I enjoy golf when I can make 2-4 birdies a round and shoot around even par.  Four decades ago I was doing that from the championship tees. Now I'm on the senior tees having a blast doing it with all my old fart friends.  The youngstas give us crap about playing from the #$%^& tees but we just tell em to shut up and pay up.?

[elwhippy]

6300 to 6500 is suffice for me these days. Went on holiday last year and for some mad reason even the higher hcp players insisted on playing 7000 yards....after late nights on the beer. Absolutely no fun hitting hybrids and woods into par 4s. 

[jvincent]

2 hours ago, iutodd said:

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the “right” tees are for me.  There was an article on this website not to long ago that said to take your 5 iron distance x 36 - which seemed very long. Then I was talking to a guy about it this past weekend and he said: “I think the right tees are when you have the same clubs in hand for your approach shot that the pros do.”  

 

Using the pros as a reference is not a good idea.

 

The 36 x 5i distance is generally a good metric but there are lots of variables there.

 

We were discussing this in our regular group the other day and the consensus was that once you get to the point where you can't reach more than 4 or 5 of the holes in regulation with an iron on a consistent basis then you should probably move up a tee.

[zebra2955]

I agree somewhat with that approach. The thing is what do the pros use for a 160yd shot ? My guess is 9 iron. But watching it seems like they are always using some wedge. That is one of the reasons I moved up a tee. Now trying to play about 5700-5800. Since I have done this my scores have gotten better and I'm having more fun. My scores have come down to the low to mid 80"s Use to be high 80-low 90

 My playing buddy just broke 90 for the first time

[RRFireblade]

To use "Pros" as a guide, you'd need to play tees that put your approach shots well inside them (Pros) to even be close to an applicable guide. To be honest, I'm not sure it scales that way. 

Edited September 8, 2020 by RRFireblade

[iutodd]

37 minutes ago, RRFireblade said:

To use "Pros" as a guide, you'd need to play tees that put your approach shots well inside them (Pros) to even be close to an applicable guide. To be honest, I'm not sure it scales that way. 

I tried to make a club to club comparison using yardage as a guide.  ~160 yards is, barring wind and elevation, 8 iron or less for almost every pro golfer. I’d say for a large number it’s 9 iron or less with some able to hit PW that far.  But, again, it’s dependent upon a large number of variables.  
 

So it’s about finding the yardage where you have 8/9 iron or less in your hand ~75% of the time on approach shots to par 4s.  If you reach for 5/6 or hybrid/wood more than 2-3 times a round on par fours..maybe move up a tee. Because you’re making the game hard for yourself and there is no reason for it. 

[iutodd]

3 hours ago, jvincent said:

 

Using the pros as a reference is not a good idea.

 

The 36 x 5i distance is generally a good metric but there are lots of variables there.

 

We were discussing this in our regular group the other day and the consensus was that once you get to the point where you can't reach more than 4 or 5 of the holes in regulation with an iron on a consistent basis then you should probably move up a tee.

Can I ask why not?  
 

If pros have 8 iron or shorter in their hands 75% of the time on par fours - why shouldn’t I, average Joe golfer, aim to have similar results?

 

I hit my five iron 195-200. What do I gain by playing 7000-7200 yards vs playing 6200-6400? Like - what’s the point?  Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to figure out here.  I play once a week and don’t have time to practice.  Why would I intentionally make my round a lot harder?

 

[iutodd]

5 hours ago, smoky25 said:

I enjoy golf when I can make 2-4 birdies a round and shoot around even par.  Four decades ago I was doing that from the championship tees. Now I'm on the senior tees having a blast doing it with all my old fart friends.  The youngstas give us crap about playing from the #$%^& tees but we just tell em to shut up and pay up.?

Love it!  I don’t know if I’ll ever shoot even from the tips - but I might have a shot at it from somewhere in the middle.

[jvincent]

47 minutes ago, iutodd said:

Can I ask why not?  
 

If pros have 8 iron or shorter in their hands 75% of the time on par fours - why shouldn’t I, average Joe golfer, aim to have similar results?

 

I hit my five iron 195-200. What do I gain by playing 7000-7200 yards vs playing 6200-6400? Like - what’s the point?  Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to figure out here.  I play once a week and don’t have time to practice.  Why would I intentionally make my round a lot harder?

 

Relatively speaking pro driver distance is much longer your average golfer compared to iron distances. Also, they also generally get a lot more roll due to course setup so they are likely hitting shorter irons than your average golfer would because of driver distance.

[llewol007]

That has truth to some point but the main reason why most amateur golfers dont play well is their contact on their ball allows for them to miss the fairway way too much.

[RRFireblade]

11 hours ago, iutodd said:

I tried to make a club to club comparison using yardage as a guide.  ~160 yards is, barring wind and elevation, 8 iron or less for almost every pro golfer. I’d say for a large number it’s 9 iron or less with some able to hit PW that far.  But, again, it’s dependent upon a large number of variables.  
 

So it’s about finding the yardage where you have 8/9 iron or less in your hand ~75% of the time on approach shots to par 4s.  If you reach for 5/6 or hybrid/wood more than 2-3 times a round on par fours..maybe move up a tee. Because you’re making the game hard for yourself and there is no reason for it. 

Understood. I'm just saying I don't think it scales that way. A pro with an 9/8/7 is not equal to an Am with a 9,P or even wedge. 

 

IMO

[me05501]

I usually choose by the par three distances. Any set that has a 200+ yard par three is probably too much for me. 

[bluedot]

The 5 iron x 36 metric is not a bad guideline at all.  There are, of course, going to be variations by course, but that's not a bad starting point.  In my experience, you can go beyond that yardage by a few hundred yards and not impact your score very much, but it isn't as "interesting" because of a lack of variety in club selection.  At the next step up, when you get 500 or so yards past that number, you are going to be playing several par 4's that you just can't reach in two, so the course is realistically a par 75 or 76 instead of 72, and that usually isn't too much fun.

 

I'll offer one other way to evaluate which set of tees you should be playing, especially if you play the same golf course a lot.  Pick several holes that have a strong "risk-reward" element, like a bunker guarding the inside of a dogleg, for instance.  If you can't get to that bunker at all, then you are too far back, and if the bunker isn't in play for you, you might be too far up.  If you are going to play the course the way the architect intended, then you should be able to carry the bunker with a really well-struck shot, but not with a miss.  Just a thought.

[MelloYello]

One of the nice things about my home course (we're private) is that we have "mixed" sets of tees. We have the normal back / middle / front tees but we always have a mix of back & middle for the young guys as well as a couple sets of middle & front for the older folks. This means that we have something like 7 or 8 different options in totality all rated with course and slope. 

 

If your course doesn't do this, try and push for them to as it really creates a lot more good options for players based on what they're comfortable with. And the guys who give/take strokes in matches love it too!

Edited September 9, 2020 by MelloYello

[SNIPERBBB]

1 hour ago, me05501 said:

I usually choose by the par three distances. Any set that has a 200+ yard par three is probably too much for me. 

One or two over 200 is my limit.  Dont really care what yardages I play. Though when my course is wet, the fairways are 10 yards wide, if that(one par 5 is literally 6 paces wide in the landing area) its gets a bit annoying.

[iutodd]

3 hours ago, RRFireblade said:

Understood. I'm just saying I don't think it scales that way. A pro with an 9/8/7 is not equal to an Am with a 9,P or even wedge
 

IMO

Well I don’t disagree - pros are better at basically everything!  But I think it’s still instructive to know that pros, much more often than not, have short iron in their hands.  I’m not saying that amateurs should all play the red tees and have wedge in their hands all the time - but clearly amateurs shouldn’t be hitting long iron/hybrids into par fours more than once/twice a round.  That definitely doesn’t scale!

Edited September 9, 2020 by iutodd

[iutodd]

1 hour ago, MelloYello said:

One of the nice things about my home course (we're private) is that we have "mixed" sets of tees. We have the normal back / middle / front tees but we always have a mix of back & middle for the young guys as well as a couple sets of middle & front for the older folks. This means that we have something like 7 or 8 different options in totality all rated with course and slope. 

 

If your course doesn't do this, try and push for them to as it really creates a lot more good options for players based on what they're comfortable with. And the guys who give/take strokes in matches love it too!

We have a course around here that does this as well and I really like it and like the idea of it.  One plays to 6400 yards and the other plays to 5700. 

[me05501]

It's almost as important to look at the rating as the distance. 

 

Some of the RTJ Golf Trail courses are absolutely brutally hard. I've learned not to bite off any more than I can chew. What would be a reasonable distance on a typical course can be very frustrating on those courses. 

[iutodd]

14 hours ago, jvincent said:

Relatively speaking pro driver distance is much longer your average golfer compared to iron distances. Also, they also generally get a lot more roll due to course setup so they are likely hitting shorter irons than your average golfer would because of driver distance.

Pros have all kinds of advantages.  When I get to a course I have no idea how fast the greens are, when they last watered the fairways and how fast they are, where the tees are, where the pins are - I have to figure all that out as I go. Also I have basically no time to practice and instead of a caddy helping me play my best I’m paired up with two random dudes I’ve never met. 

 

So I get it - this is sort of a stupid comparison - but I have no idea why I wouldn’t take my skill level and various disadvantages into account and at least attempt to make things equal to whatever the pros are doing and give myself the best chance of scoring well. 

 

Like I understand not wanting to make things seem easy. Clearly I shouldn’t be playing the most forward tees - that would be a mockery of the game and the golf gods would punish me. But if pros, due to all their skill and advantages, find a way to put short iron in their hands a bunch - then I see zero problem with me doing the same by my choice of tee.

[chigolfer1]

21 hours ago, iutodd said:

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the “right” tees are for me.  There was an article on this website not to long ago that said to take your 5 iron distance x 36 - which seemed very long. Then I was talking to a guy about it this past weekend and he said: “I think the right tees are when you have the same clubs in hand for your approach shot that the pros do.”  So I looked at some approach yardages on par fours for pro players during the playoffs - getting club data is harder but I think yardage is fairly instructive - obviously wind and temp and elevation changes play a role - I don’t have time to break all that down!
 

So I picked random guys that made the cut for each event and looked at their fourth round approach yardages using the shot link data on pgatour.com. For the Northern Trust I picked Adam Schenk - who is an Indiana native like me and finished T39.  Here are his par four approach yardages:

 

119

28

158

158

149

157

202

154

232

141

152

 

So we have two obvious outliers. 28 and 232.  However I think the overall point is that 9 of 11 approach shots were 158 yards or less.  
 

Next the BMW. Which played ridiculously tough. Let’s look at Carlos Ortiz who finished T25:

161

137

81

153

119

158

133

57

158

187

142

216

 

We see a remarkably similar pattern...10 of 12 approach shots were from 161 yards or less.

 

And now the Tour Championship.  Let’s go with Lanto Griffin who finished T18:
 

189

112

192

137

162

171

144

128

117

227

163

114

 

Another fairly similar pattern with 8 of 12 approaches 163 yards or less.  

So, this is random and obviously not that deep of a research project but it was pretty interesting as a thought exercise and I think the numbers are fairly compelling. How often do you have 8/9 iron or less in your hands on par 4 approach shots?  Because these three guys had them more than 75% of the time...

 

And I personally think that’s a good metric for finding the right tees for you: ~75% of approaches on par fours should be with 8 iron or less.  Ironically the guy I played with, who was in his 60s, was playing the same tees as me saying something like: “my ego won’t let me move up any more.”  He was often hitting hybrid/wood (and leaving it short) while I had short iron in my hands!  Who do you think had more fun and scored better?

 

I'm not getting your original premise that 5 iron X 36 seems "very long."   It seems about perfect to me and not really close to very long.  How far do you hit your 5 iron and driver?

[chigolfer1]

15 hours ago, iutodd said:

Can I ask why not?  
 

If pros have 8 iron or shorter in their hands 75% of the time on par fours - why shouldn’t I, average Joe golfer, aim to have similar results?

 

I hit my five iron 195-200. What do I gain by playing 7000-7200 yards vs playing 6200-6400? Like - what’s the point?  Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to figure out here.  I play once a week and don’t have time to practice.  Why would I intentionally make my round a lot harder?

 

 

How far do you hit your driver??   A 195-200 yard 5-iron is near tour distance.

Edited September 9, 2020 by chigolfer1

[MelloYello]

1 hour ago, iutodd said:

We have a course around here that does this as well and I really like it and like the idea of it.  One plays to 6400 yards and the other plays to 5700. 

 

Yeah, I didn't even know this was a thing before joining but it's great. 

 

I usually play the back & middle mix.

 

My course just happens to be one that features a lot of variety: short holes, long holes, etc. There's not a ton of difference between the tips and the middle tees but we do have a couple where it's a killer including an uphill Par-4 on the back that gets to ~450 from the back tees as well as a long, uphill Par-3 on the front that's around ~225. I don't need either of those so it's nice to be able to do a "mostly tips" round that still counts!

 

[Hawkeye77]

Most courses aren't designed for pros and they represent less than 1% of all golfers in terms of skill level, so not sure why the pro comparison is "it" but use any metric you want and play any tees you want.  Saying you want an 8 iron because a pro hits an 8 iron - is your proximity with 8 iron even from your distance the same as a pro?  Doubt it very much, so probably need to take that into account, if that is the comparison you want to use. So then is it 9, is it PW, etc.

 

I guess if you want to pretend you are at that level and come up with a combination of distances/clubs hit/etc. that give you similar results - great.

 

Otherwise, play distances that maybe allow you to enjoy the course as it was designed (pros would airmail a few of our par 4s with their drivers, doesn't mean I'm dropping near the green and playing my 2nd from there) and provide the challenges it intended?

 

Again, whatever works, but using pros' distances as a metric seems to have some question marks.

 

And I second a post above - for me, an unfamiliar course, first thing I'm looking at are par 3 distances to determine which tees to play, if it's my choice.  

 

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by Hawkeye77

[chigolfer1]

The OP does bring up a good point that brings us back to how far these pros are hitting their drives somewhat making almost every course "obsolete" from the designer's intention. Let's face it, these course designers were not thinking that most of the holes were going to be wedges in for the pros.   I don't know if anyone has a stat but what is the difference in the last 25 years between players on average having 7 irons into par 4s vs. wedges?  It's had to have gone way up.   The pros have hacked the system so much, I don't know if you can even look at how they play a course as a good template of how the average joe should play a course if he plays from the "right distance."   But, if that's what the OP is saying, I agree that the the 5 iron X 36 is probably an outdated metric in those terms.