The best move golfers can make is playing from tee boxes that best suit their game. it will lead to more enjoyment, lower scores and faster rounds.
magine that you’re playing your favorite course with your best golfing buddies. You tee off at 8 a.m., and you’re hitting short irons into almost every green. You finish in less than four hours with your lowest score in years.
The funny thing is, you’ve done nothing to radically change your game. Your swing is the same, your clubs are the same, you haven’t ingested some magical potion or invested in some improvement gizmo.
But you did something that day that lowered your score and increased your enjoyment. And it’s something you should have done years ago: You played from the appropriate tees.
Bob Veroulis, a PGA teaching professional at Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta, realizes the frustration many people have with slow play and their inability to shoot low scores.
And while Veroulis knows that golf lessons, improving your equipment and practicing are the most traditional ways to make positive changes in your game, he also realizes that most golfers don’t have the time, patience or money to take the long road.
So he’s suggesting a shorter road. Rather than tee off from the back tees, move up, keep the ball in play and give yourself more chances to make birdies and pars.
That will translate into more enjoyment for everybody, because hitting from tees more suited to your ability will speed up play and ensure that you properly experience the course you’re playing. Designers place bunkers, water hazards and other challenging features at a certain distance from the tee box. They’re designed to make golfers think at the tee. They encourage strategy. But when those hazards aren’t brought into play — because golfers can’t drive the ball far enough to consider them — a special part of the experience is removed.
But Veroulis knows that convincing golfers to play from more forward tees isn’t easy. Golf may be a game of skill, patience, dedication and a huge dollop of luck, but it’s also a game of ego. And few things inflate a golfer’s ego more than the thought of standing on the tee of a 550-yard par 5 and smacking a ball 300-plus yards.
But the reality is that few of us can do that consistently. What we’re doing instead is playing catch up on most holes. Instead of being in a position to attack the green with a lofted iron, as most holes are designed to be played, we need a fairway wood or long iron just to cover the distance. A¡nd good luck getting the ball near the hole with one of those clubs in your hand.
We agree with Veroulis’ suggestion and wish more golfers would embrace the idea. If everyone played from the tees most suited to their game, we’d probably have fewer strokes, meaning much quicker rounds. And we’d wind up with lower scores and the feeling that we played the course as it was meant to be played.
That all equals more enjoyment. And while we love crushing a drive and pretending we’re Tiger Woods off the tee as much as anyone, we also realize how precious time is and would rather have an enjoyable round with lots of pars — and maybe even a few birdies — than walk off the course feeling dejected and beaten up.
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