Senior Golfers

2020-09-06T16:25:12+00:00

At what age are you considered a senior player? Do you play at courses that give seniors a break?

sdandrea1

Par4QC Why not? What does he do with his second shot?

He's not moving up because there's only one set of tees left......Red, and they're under 5000 yards. He can reach all the par 4s in reg and one of the 5s in two. He doesn't because his game isn't that good off the ground or around the greens, but from the reds, he'll be driving some of the par 4s.

sdandrea1

garyt1957 Take Steve for example who has posted he's in driver Hell, but he's still able to score because he's playing the right tees.

Yep,
I score because my short drives are in the fairway and I can chip and putt. I hit VERY few greens in REG. I play sub-6K tees. More like 5700 y.

Rickochet

sdandrea1 I score because my short drives are in the fairway and I can chip and putt. I hit VERY few greens in REG. I play sub-6K tees. More like 5700 y.

An XXIO driver can fix that. 😜

garyt1957

sdandrea1 Exactly. But your handicap (if it went by that) would push you back to the next trees at maybe 6200. Now you're struggling (maybe not you personally but a guy like you) from the further tees and you have to play there for however many rounds it takes for your hdcp to go up to where you can move back to the shorter tees. Makes no sense to me.

Eguller

Typhoon

At least my comments generated some discussion. What are the reasons tees are set where they are ?
Obviously, distance plays a role. So does the purpose of having fun. I have a playing buddy who is 81 y.o.
and plays the short up (junior, etc.) tees. He routinely shoot in the low to mid 70's. When we move him
back to the 'senior' tees, he shoots mid to upper 80's. He play to a 2 hdcp from the up tees and prefers it.
He was a very good golfer. Our 'senior' gang allows anyone to play the tees they wish, with appropriate handicap.
He doesn't enjoy trying to play the 'senior' tees with a 10 hdcp. Works for us. Depending upon health and injuries,
I play one of the back tees for the extra strokes and can still move it out far enough to enjoy the challenge. YMMV

fatshot

Eguller

At least my comments generated some discussion. What are the reasons tees are set where they are ?

I often wonder what these golf courses are thinking when they set the tees up for play....I don't want to play 380 or even 360 yard par 4's anymore (can't usually reach the green unless I hit a perfect drive followed by a perfect fairway wood, and how often does that happen??). But I also don't want to play 280 yard par 4's either! I can think of several holes at courses I play where the white tees are beyond my ability to reach in two shots, but the gold tees
are only 5 or 10 yards behind the lady's tees! Maybe it's b/c the guys setting up the tees in the morning are
half asleep, or have no clue about how far an average senior player hits the ball off the tee? I hit it about 200 yards, give or take, which means holes 320 to 350 are about the right distances for me to be playing, IMO. Like Steve says, the short game is what allows us to score or not to score, but the hole has to be "reachable" so we're not pulling out 3 and 5 woods all the time too.....

Typhoon

Eguller

Like u said Dan, tees based on handicap.

garyt1957

Eguller Exactly as it should be

Rickochet

fatshot I often wonder what these golf courses are thinking when they set the tees up for play....I don't want to play 380 or even 360 yard par 4's anymore (can't usually reach the green unless I hit a perfect drive followed by a perfect fairway wood, and how often does that happen??). But I also don't want to play 280 yard par 4's either! I can think of several holes at courses I play where the white tees are beyond my ability to reach in two shots,

My group plays the gold senior tees. We have a couple of holes at our usual track that has one par 4 hole too long and one too short. We picked a designated spot in the fairway to tee up to make one shorter and one longer. Works just fine.

garyt1957

fatshot I often wonder what these golf courses are thinking when they set the tees up for play...

Other then the first two sets of tees, I think everything else is often just an afterthought. My wife plays and it's so obvious the ladies tees were just thrown down somewhere without thought. Some courses the ladies tees, every par 3 was under 100 yards. So much for diversity. She usually plays the senior tees or even the whites because of this. They really need a ladies "players" tees and a "hacker" tees.
Same for senior tees. A lot of courses are just now adding them so what do they do? Put them on the ladies tees a few yards behind the ladies markers. They don't want the expense of putting in a new tee box. At least some courses are making a set of senior tees by combining some white and red tees to get a reasonable yardage. You can do this yourself of course but not if you're entering scores for hdcp cause it won't have a rating. Speaking of ratings , that's another thing with courses around here that are adding senior tees. They won't get them rated, so they can't be used for handicapping purposes. Does it really cost that much to get a tee box rated?

fatshot

Rickochet "We picked a designated spot in the fairway to tee up to make one shorter and one longer"

Yep....those GPS units make it really handy to do that!! In fact I've been toying with
the idea of cutting two 4" x 4" blocks, painting them gold, and keeping them in my golf bag as a gag
to "make my own tees" on holes like that!! 😀 😀

garyt1957

fatshot I did that for my Dad his last couple years playing in his 90's. No par 4s over 320. I'd find a spot in the fw and he'd tee off from there.

Spartan

For the original question, 60 seems to be the age around here for senior discounts. For the course I've played the last two times out the discount was $6.

Before this year, all I've played has been 9 hole rounds in our golf league. The league didn't happen this year, so I started playing 18 hole rounds again. The buddy I play with is 72 and has been struggling a lot with his game so we've been playing the gold tees, which are mostly the red tees with a few holes having golds farther back. It's been fun having short irons into greens and one par 5 reachable in 2 (it really should be a par 4 from those tees). After having spent 5 years struggling on a P.B. Dye course, it's good to be having fun.

Typhoon

garyt1957

Itd be fine with me, we get enough calls to fill the place 2 times over everyday!

Youd come a lot closer to 75 from the reds, not spend so much time out there holding everyone up. Probably enjoy it more. Even shooting 100 from the reds instead of 130 from the blues, who’d you rather be playing behind? Oh and multiply it times 4 for the foursome. I see it all day, we know the times when people take the turn and who is holding up the pace of play.

ive played plenty of courses where there is a sign on the first tee next to the blues or blacks saying if your handicap is not 5 or less you cannot play these tees.

garyt1957

Typhoon Itd be fine with me, we get enough calls to fill the place 2 times over everyday!

You'd be empty if people had to shoot 75 to play, though

Typhoon

garyt1957

I used to do that with my kids Gary, it was perfect... they had fun and felt like could compete with me. Didn’t have to look at a daunting amount of real estate in front of them

scotts33

Score is relative. How I keep score. Amount of center flush impacts on full shots plus great short shots up/downs and putts. Golfers that are obsessed with score are like the guys chasing spin numbers with their driver and at 80 - 90 mph like most seniors over 65 that's the least thing to think about.

garyt1957

scotts33 Score's not relative if you're playing competitively, it's all that counts. I agree with you when I'm playing for fun though, I'm way more concerned with how well I hit the ball then what I score. I've hit a crappy drive, then a worm burner that luckily runs up close and a tap in for birdie, no satisfaction in that. But if I'm playing in competition, I'll take it.

Typhoon

garyt1957

Every place would be but my point to them was if your not good, play the proper tees. Don’t make everyone else on the behind you suffer to satisfy your own ignorance. I was brought up as red=Ladies, White=amateur and blues were for pro. Adding senior or junior tees is something that came along later... which is smart. They do it hoping people are smart enough to play the right tees.

scotts33

garyt1957 Score's not relative if you're playing competitively, it's all that counts.

How many seniors on this site play competitively/tournaments. Less than 5%? That's what I would guess. So I disagree golfers tend to get to wrapped up in score to the point where I see over 25% shave strokes and don't play the ball down.

garyt1957

scotts33 How many seniors on this site play competitively/tournaments. Less than 5%? That's what I would guess. So I disagree golfers tend to get to wrapped up in score to the point where I see over 25% shave strokes and don't play the ball down.

I would bet it's quite high when you consider leagues. There are tons of senior leagues out my way. YMMV

sdandrea1

scotts33 How many seniors on this site play competitively/tournaments.

During my 6 months in FL all my rounds are USGA rules and handicapped. We play some 4 man team games, so it's not official medal or match play, but we honor the rules and use our handicaps to balance the teams and payout $ in all the games. In order for my cap to be accurate, I play by the rules here in VA. I shot 87 today on a course (where I shoot at or under 80 when I'm driving it well) because I was in tall uncut rough WAY too often and I did NOT fluff my ball up to improve my lie. Real golf is hard.

« Previous Page Next Page »