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Gender neutral tees

spuddy4711 · 2021-11-03 05:35:48

UK club(s?) introducing this, will it catch on here ? Idea is to allow players choose which tee position to use, depending on their ability, with those generally needing over 100 shots being encouraged to use the forward tees. WHS system would need some tweaking though.

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#92 09-11-2021 5:45pm
Russman

Registered Users Posts: 5,885 ✭✭✭

Join Date: December 2009

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Let me start by saying I don't care even a tiny bit what tees anyone plays off, one way or the other, play off what you like. I doesn't bother or effect me in the slightest. There's absolutely an argument for players of any gender playing a course yardage to suit their ability.
That said I can't see how courses could be rated fairly or equitably. Wouldn't we end up with a hybrid mish mash where a course is rated too easy for men and too hard for ladies ? As I understand it, and I'm open to correction, the ratings teams look at all the aspects and conditions of a hole, including landing area for tee shots. I appreciate there will be different landing areas between a scratch player and a 20 h/c, but I think (again, open to correction) they base it on a theoretical "bogey golfer" who carries it XX yards. Presumably this notional bogey golfer would be different for men and ladies in terms of their carry distance ? I'd imagine so given the parameters for par 3, 4, 5 are different for each gender. If they used some sort of average I think it would be too short for men and too long for ladies, no ?
I dunno, I've no issue with separate ladies and mens ratings for each set of tees rather than just one set of tees for ladies, that might be easiest, but I think there's more than a whiff of "solution looking for a problem" with this. Sometimes its ok to say that ladies and men are different, I'm almost sure that even in Irish regional PGA events the lady pros play off different tees on certain holes, maybe someone can confirm ?
I just can't see how its workable in practical terms and what benefits there are to it. A bit like a course wanting to increase the par on the card from 69 to 70 but they only way they can do it is by turning a great par 4 into a sh1t par 5.

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