What Will it Take for Golfers to Move Up a Tee Box?

Choosing what distance to play from is an age-old question debated on first tees everywhere. 

A select number of golfers have that choice down to a science but the rest tend to take educated guesses or assume age and gender should be the only variables involved in the decision. 

The result: a significant number of golfers play courses that are too long for their skill level. 

An already difficult game becomes even harder. A slow round becomes even slower. 

What is it about golfers that makes us so unwilling to move up a tee box? And could the rollback—set to take place in 2030 for recreational golfers—eventually be the slight push some of us need to adjust our mindset? 

Many Golfers are Gluttons for Punishment

In 2011, the United States Golf Association and PGA of America announced a joint initiative encouraging golfers to play from tees that best suited their game. 

Tee It Forward, an idea inspired by Adams Golf founder Barney Adams, launched with commercials and widespread support in the golf community. Everyone agreed, in principle, that it was a good idea. The U.S. National Golf Foundation estimates about one-third of core golfers and the majority of beginners play from a set of tees that are too long for them. That includes more than four million “serious” golfers (those who play eight or more times per year). 

Some quick math shows us why this happens. The average adult male golfer has a handicap of around 14 with a driving distance in the neighborhood of 215 yards. If that average golfer plays a 6,300-yard course—which is a pretty common “white or blue tees” offering—a typical par-3 would be 160 yards, a standard par-4 around 370 yards and a par-5 about 500 yards. 

We predict a lot of long- to mid-iron approaches in this average golfer’s future. Even that is optimistic. And what about the half of golfers who hit their drives short of 215 yards? 

This problem is arguably even worse for a large number of women golfers, beginners and other slower swingers because many courses have inadequate forward tee boxes. 

USGA research from last year shows the median forward tee yardage on an 18-hole, par-72 golf course is 4,952 yards. From that distance, the average female golfer (or an equivalent player) needs a 5-iron or more for their approach on 17 of the 18 holes. 

“A forward tee distance that is closer to 4,000 yards than 5,000 yards is a better fit for far more players—including the average female golfer and many others with slower swing speeds,” according to the USGA. 

This is particularly concerning when you consider that a record 3.2 million golfers played on a course for the first time in 2021 during the pandemic. Junior and female golfer participation is up. Golfers with slower swing speeds are now more than 25 percent of the world’s population of golfers, the USGA notes. 

New golfers are more likely to be retained if they are playing from an appropriate yardage. 

Despite all of this, the Tee It Forward campaign of 13 years ago struggled to gain traction. When the NGF conducted an extensive survey of core golfers in 2021, only 30 percent of players had moved forward in the past decade—and the majority of them were older golfers who were due to naturally move up a tee box as they aged. 

Of those golfers who moved forward, 80 percent said they enjoyed the game more. 

In that same broader survey of core golfers, the overwhelming majority agreed that “playing from inappropriate tees is a big problem” throughout the game and they were “open to experimenting with playing from shorter tees.” 

The reasons are pretty straightforward: it’s not fun to play bad golf, and it’s really not fun to play bad golf slowly. 

You can see the dilemma here. We all must be stubborn. 

Most golfers recognize a problem but not enough of us are doing anything about it. 

NGF and USGA research states that golfers who hit their drives 225 yards or less, on average, should be playing from a maximum of 6,000 yards. 

The game would clearly be better if we all heed that advice. 

So why isn’t everyone moving up? 

“Tee box inertia” is a Legitimate Obstacle

Every golfer has stood on the first tee of an unfamiliar course and pondered which set of tees would be best. 

The decision is just as much about culture and convenience than playability. 

There are long-standing assumptions about how men play from the “blue tees”, senior men from the “white tees” and women from “red tees” because a lot of golfers grew up with that being the expectation. 

Groups of men, seniors, women, juniors and other demographics have played golf together for a long time. Routines develop. Courses used to only have three sets of tee boxes, if that, and golfers based their decision on that. 

If golfers play the blue tees on their home course, they will generally choose the equivalent on a new course while only glancing at the yardage. And isn’t there a bond when a group of similar people share the same tee box? You talk more, compliment each other more and watch out for your partner’s tee shots more. 

A high-handicap golfer often doesn’t want to play from a tee box ahead when he or she is with a group of more experienced friends. They want to be a part of the group more than singling themselves out to move forward, even if moving forward would result in lower scores. 

All of this is understandable. Deviating from our tee box habit is inconvenient for many of us. 

That is, at the core, the tee box inertia problem. We all are used to playing a certain set of tees or a certain yardage of course—and that experience is built up over a long period of time. 

When Adams developed Tee It Forward, he said success would be a long and arduous process. He was right. 

It will take systemic change on the part of courses and golfers for moving forward to become socially acceptable. 

What Can Courses Do to Change?

The course responsibility has three main parts: adding more tee box options, taking away the stigma of those tee boxes and building shorter courses in general. 

There is a lot of progress being made on all three fronts. 

We’ve seen some courses with seven, eight or even nine tee box options if you include blends where sets of tee boxes are mixed and matched on the scorecard. 

We were looking at the scorecard for Mammoth Dunes, the David McLay Kidd layout at Sand Valley Resort in Wisconsin—there are 10 different yardage options. The tips are 6,988 yards while the shortest set of tee boxes are 4,055 yards. Mammoth Dunes, built in 2018, is one of many new courses taking this approach. 

Not every course can afford to maintain five or six tee boxes but they can all get creative in offering blends or other options. 

And the naming of those tee boxes is also changing. Blue, white and red are slowly being replaced with other colors, animal names or something else entirely. 

One of our favorites in this category is the wonderfully weird Mike Strantz-designed Tobacco Road Golf Club in Sanford, N.C. The course has tee boxes (with appropriate tee markers) named after farming tools like a ripper, disc, plow and cultivator. It’s a terrific fit for that rugged property. 

It may seem like a small idea but it takes the golfer out of their routine. It makes them think. They don’t just automatically pull up to the “blues” or whatever other set of tees that are a part of their normal play. 

It should also be noted that courses are indeed being built shorter: U.S. golf courses constructed from 2010-2020 averaged 6,652 yards—274 yards shorter than those from 1990-2010. 

While significantly fewer courses have been built over the past 10 years when compared to the boom period of the ‘90s, it’s still a positive trend that gets more golfers closer to the hole. 

One more note: better forward tee boxes—real tee boxes and not just tee markers placed in the fairway—could really help matters here. 

When the USGA surveyed 20,000 golfers and asked how they felt about playing from tee markers placed in the fairway rather than actual tee boxes, 53 percent said they had a problem with this and only 37 percent said they would be fine with it (10 percent said they didn’t know). 

Golfers want to play from actual tee boxes. 

What Can Golfers Do to Change?

All of this ultimately comes down to individual golfers educating themselves. 

Golfers have unprecedented access to launch monitors, simulators, rangefinders and other tech—it doesn’t take much to learn exactly how far you hit each club. 

So from where should you be playing? A good starting point is to identify your average 7-iron distance. Using this yardage, the USGA has developed some parameters to help people determine an appropriate set of tees. 

If you hit your 7-iron 170 yards or more—and a lot of us are jealous if you do—your best course length is in the 6,700-6,900-yard range. There is obviously some variance with elite players but they are not referring to tour players or the game’s top amateurs here. 

If your 7-iron is around 155 yards, which is a wide swath of players, 6,400-6,600 yards is appropriate. But once you go down to 140 yards or so with your 7-iron, the best yardage would be 5,900-6,100 yards. 

This is an important note here. Despite those two 7-iron distances being just 15 yards apart, the appropriate total course distance changes by 500 yards. 

You can see on the chart above just how much the target yardage changes based on average 7-iron distance. Every golfer—especially new golfers—should be educated on this. 

What does this really mean? The USGA says playing from the “Best Tees”, as they call it, will allow golfers to shoot lower scores and carry a handicap that is a more accurate representation of their skill level. 

Will the rollback help push us all a little closer?

There is an interesting discussion being had about what effect the rollback will have on recreational golfers. 

We’re still figuring out exactly how much distance will be lost. It is obvious that faster swingers will lose more yardage on a relative scale—but the average golfer might only see a few yards coming off their longest shots. 

Will it be a noticeable difference or will the golf world hardly recognize a change when the rollback comes into play for all golfers six years from now? 

We have a feeling that a lot of golfers will move forward—at least slightly—no matter what. 

It seems like a natural thought to say, “I’m getting a little older and the ball is going a little shorter so maybe it’s time to reconsider where I’m playing from.” 

Only time will tell on this one. It could be a positive effect of the rollback if the impact of moving forward is greater than the impact of shorter hitting distances. 

Do You Feel You Play From the Appropriate Set of Tees?

We want to hear from you. 

First off, what is your skill level and from what yardage do you usually play? 

Do you believe there are too many golfers playing courses that are too long for them? Or is it less of a problem in your eyes? 

What is the best solution to get golfers moving up a tee box? Will the rollback make any impact? 

Let us know below in the comments.