Does Anyone Care About Shorter Tees?

[Adelade]

In making Nine Bridges, the South Korean course for the official PGA Tour, I have provisionally made the choice to skip the shorter tee options in order to provide more choice and customization for pro play tees. More specifically, my current 5 sets of tees are assigned like this:

Back Tee - total yardage 7243 (6612 meters) - Made to reflect the tees used by the PGA Tour
Middle Tee - total yardage 6791 (6201 meters) - Made to reflect the real Blue tees
Forward Tee - total yardage 6372 (5815 meters) - Made to reflect the real White tees
Junior Tee - total yardage 6910 (6311 meters) - Flexibly filling in gaps and bonus options in various ways
Ladies Tee - total yardage 7244 (6614 meters) - PGA Tour in their slightly (though noticeably) alternate setup

Currently SKIPPED are:

-The real Yellow tee, which is or at least was 5862 yds (5360 m) some years back (newest info I have found)
-The real Red tee, which is or at least was 5188 yds (4744 m) some years back (newest info I have found)

It is my understanding that on an average day, the club's ordinary male members below 18 or so handicap use the white tees, though I could be wrong, some may use the yellow? Red tees, ladies, well I could be wrong but I doubt anyone plays Links simulating hacker ladies golf? I believe Ladies on pro level would at least use the White tees.

So my question is simply, does anyone like to use tees in Links with a total yardage shorter than 6000 yds or so? Im thinking it is at least extremely rare, but even if its only a couple people, I would hate if they werent able to enjoy this magnificent course and here give them a chance to cast their vote, even anonymously if they wish.

The character of the course in question (yardage put aside) is a challenging pro course, but still perhaps among the easier half of real PGA courses.

[pmgolf]

It'll be interesting to see how much more challenging it is with faster conditions!

I like the yardages you've set up since Links has no way to effectively and accurately restrict the yardage of it's clubs.

Pete

[gene_golf]

This discussion has occurred a couple of times before. I made the point before that using ladies tees is a bit off as players that use regular length seldom decide to play from ladies tees unless trying to shoot a real low score on occasion for a change. (Here when growing up in a group we decided to play from ladies tee on first hole, a par 5 to see if could reach green in 2 shots. The owner of course came riding out to challenge us saying front nine was closed and did we not see sign saying so. Of course sign was on back tee and middle tee that day.) Also if to reenact distances driver can be set to only go as far as 141 yards I believe and doubt if many players set up playing as alternative players and use ladies tees. I am all in favor of having different angles along with different lengths to hit into par 3 greens instead of the long straight line of tees made popular by Robert Trent Jones and this is contingent as to whether tall trees are in the way from tee to green. Also this changeup could be done on par 4's and par 5's, so long as tall trees do not interfere with line from whichever tee to fairway making for a straightaway hole to play as a dogleg on another day of play. There are some courses such as Winged Foot with long narrow tree lined holes that make a player play under those constraints. Such is golf and remembering what Nicklaus wrote as his theory of design to use natural hazards found on plot of land as a way of designing a course. The exception being as saw last week Shadow Creek where it cost a fortune to build a beautiful, but unnatural course in the desert.

[Ian Wells]

Adelade,
For a real course I would always make the course in APCD exactly as it exists, but, for better or worse, that is me.
Anybody who is willing to spend 100's of hours making a course in APCD, with all it's frustration, they deserve to make whatever changes they want. There is a lot to be said for making additional tees that will make the course more of a test, or more interesting. There are no rules.
Good luck with the course.
Ian

[Stephen Sullivan]

Adelade,
For a real course I would always make the course in APCD exactly as it exists, but, for better or worse, that is me.
Anybody who is willing to spend 100's of hours making a course in APCD, with all it's frustration, they deserve to make whatever changes they want. There is a lot to be said for making additional tees that will make the course more of a test, or more interesting. There are no rules.
Good luck with the course.
Ian

Same here. Always try and use the shown tee boxes.

[Jimbo]

I wonder how many Linksters have more than one ani?
One for your PGA golfer
One for the "Real You"
One for the "Younger" you
...with club lengths adjusted appropriately.

The closer tees offer different approaches to the same holes-but only if you play to their level...which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I'd say keep them.

[Adelade]

I was surprised to see the 3 votes saying they're using them and it being important popping up early on, curious if the number will grow. Upon reflection, my current Junior tees are honestly not adding much to the table at all, and I think I'd be totally ok with changing them to the real yellow tees instead. Not making the decision quite yet though. I dont think Im going to do the red tees unless maybe someone specifically speaks up that they use them, Im thinking along the lines of what gene said, that there are probably very few who not only simulate shorter distance golf but also female short distance golf at the same time. At any rate I dont know how I would fit the red tees in, Im determined to have at least two options for PGA tees since I believe they play one of the holes in one of two very different ways from day to day. It would be convenient if I could split things into two versions - members and tournament, but I dont want to do that JUST for tees, and inconveniently enough, people who want to play with tournament distances and challenges dont line up with people wanting to play with tournament objects! :P

I like the yardages you've set up since Links has no way to effectively and accurately restrict the yardage of it's clubs.

What do you mean by this Pete? I've restricted my club yardages for a player down to reflecting how far I hit in real life as a junior player and found it to work well (although hitting it straight was too easy even on Elite, but I didnt try it with powerstroke yet), is it perhaps more complicated for RTS or something? Or are you talking about there being no way to set up tournaments with shorter distances as a rule?

[pmgolf]

I tried restricting club distance 5-10 years ago and found it to be unreliable with RTS. Occasionally shots would go further than I had set, and it happened often enough for me to not trust it. I was blowing shots over the green. Maybe it works with click. I hope so. I wound up limiting distance by excluding the driver and 3 wood.

I did try to set up a tournament with restricted distance but I had to use a .mop with a fixed club set. I couldn't figure out how to use it in LSPN.

Pete

[Ian Wells]

I may have been misunderstood.
I voted "Who gives a crap", because I believe it is a decision for the designer to make. If he/she feels they can make better use of those tees than the actual tee allocation, why not.

I believe, I will always make the APCD rendition in line with the real course, but who knows.

Ian

[Adelade]

I know what you mean Ian, though making things "in line with the real course" isnt always so straight forward. Real courses arent set in stone, they sometimes mow tee areas slightly different from year to year in some places, and all courses move their tee markers around all the time so as not to wear down the grass too much in one spot, even real scorecards dont tell the full truth in that regard.