Dear Molly: My wife is 65 and I am 69. Most courses we play have four or five tee boxes. The most forward is considered the women’s tee and the second forward is considered the senior tee for men over some age, usually 60. It doesn’t seem fair that older men get to move up but women play from the same tees regardless of their age. Are there senior tees for women? – Tim Taylor
P.S. We play most of our golf at Cheyenne Shadows.
As a senior woman, Molly feels your pain. But let’s start with tossing out the age and gender labels for tee boxes. All the tees are women’s tees. All the tees are men’s tees. Says Joe McCleary, the CGA’s chief business officer and a former superintendent: “All of the tees are for anyone whose game fits them.”
But old attitudes die hard, don’t they? The 2011 “Tee It Forward” initiative gave us a chart recommending ballpark ranges, depending on our average drive. A 200-yard average drive – perhaps fairly typical for the average “men over some age”? – matched up with a course measuring 5,200 to 5,400 yards. That’s a common setup for the typically red forward tees at Colorado golf courses, but those bold red tees might as well be pink for all the appeal they held for proud, aging men. So golf courses started installing tees a few yards behind those to encourage shorter hitting men to move up. There’s your so-called “men’s senior tee.”
In the years since “Tee It Forward,” the USGA has conducted distance studies showing the average drive by an amateur woman golfer measures just 147 yards. In the common club handicap range of 13-20, the average reaches 155; the 6-to-12s average 177 off the tee. Matching up those distances with “Tee It Forward,” the average woman should be playing a course of 3,500 to 3,700 yards; even those 6-12s match up with only 4,400 to 4,600 yards.
Last year the USGA produced what it called the “7-Iron Solution” that coordinated 7-iron distance with golf course length recommendation. I don’t know many women who even pack a 7-iron. And, iron sizes are like women’s pants, where a 10 in this brand might be the equivalent of a 14 in that one.
Bottom line bad news: The average golf course is too long for the average woman to have any chance of reaching all but the par-3s in regulation. And on the par-3s, she has to hit such a long club that she has to factor in bounce and roll.
Bottom line good news: More golf courses are looking for ways to install more forward tees. I can report that several times in the past year I have said to a course superintendent, “Your course is in such great shape, but it plays so long from the forward tees,” and gotten the quick and enthusiastic response, “We’re working on that!”
Your Cheyenne Shadows, a beautifully maintained course literally in the shadows of Cheyenne Mountain, is among them, with tee box renovations in the 2025 budget. Assistant pro Lucas Cimino says the Dick Phelps design has changed “quite a bit” since it opened for the military at Fort Carson in 1971. “Over the years we took out 30 bunkers and a few ponds,” he said. But, he says, it’s 5,759 from the forward green tees – with lots of carries over that annoying creek that runs through the course. And that’s too long.
Ideally, the course can plant tees measuring not more than 5,000 yards, and then a combo tee can be created with the green tees for three distinct options. McCleary says USGA encouragement prompted the CGA to do exactly that at CommonGround, which now has a purple tee option – and they’re not just for senior women, by the way. “They’re used by a wide range of players,” he says.
Do you have a question about golf etiquette, golf relationships or the culture of golf in Colorado? Email it to Molly McMulligan, the CGA’s on-the-course advisor on how to have more fun on the golf course. Her creator, researcher and writer is golf journalist and CGA member Susan Fornoff.
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