Golf’s tee-marker debate refuses to go away
Several times a year, my home club stages red-tee days where the entire field moves forward from the regular white (or blue) tees and plays from the red markers.
It’s a terrific utilisation of the Slope rating system whereby players can move back or forward and have their daily handicaps adjusted to fit. Such built-in flexibility should really be exploited by more golf clubs more often.
One Saturday recently, I played in a red-tee day for the first time and really enjoyed playing from different places and having to adopt a different strategy on many holes. After a fairly straightforward birdie on the opening hole – our par-5 10th, which played a good 70 metres shorter than usual – I was quickly lulled into a false sense of security. Yet there I was standing on the tee of our short par-4 12th with no idea about which club to use from a tee that was so much further forward than I was used to. I lazily dragged a non-committed 4-iron into the left trees and made bogey. Two holes later, I racked up a triple-bogey that was followed by a quad. Round over. Well, at least as far as returning a decent score was concerned.
I’d fallen victim to the twin villains of indecision and unfamiliarity and was completely caught out on multiple occasions by the subtle differences between our usual tee markers and the red ones. Yet I loved it. I loved the course-within-a-course notion that the simple act of moving up a set of tees created. Other golfers at the club that day agreed. While from a competition point of view it was a haven for C graders in particular to prosper with their higher handicaps, several A graders I spoke with said they also like the different shots and strategy required when playing from the reds.
I’m reluctant to call them ladies tees, for that’s a whole other burning issue in the sport at club level right now. I’ve written in this space before (“Seeing Red”, February 2020) how the term “ladies tees” needs instant retirement, yet it’s an argument that’s grown louder since then.
An increasing number of clubs are moving towards gender-neutral tees, and it’s long overdue. Which tees you play from should have more to do with ability and the way you play the game than what’s between your legs.
Back at my club, I play from time to time in the same group as a woman in her early 20s whose handicap is usually 1 from the red markers and perhaps 3 or 4 from the white tees. She says she prefers playing from farther back as it provides a better test for her game. I’ve told her I think it’s great that she’s permitted to choose to play competition rounds from the white markers if she wants to, but in saying that, the notion of ‘choice’ should certainly trump ‘permission’.
Not everyone agrees, though. Lachlan Clarke drew attention to himself recently when the now former member at Victoria’s 13th Beach Golf Links walked away from not only the club but the sport entirely in direct response to 13th Beach’s decision to move to gender-neutral tees. Clarke didn’t go quietly, saying in an e-mail tirade to the club that was copied to golf administrators, media and even prominent politicians: “I cannot be part of such an outrageous shift towards pompous grandstanding.”
In terms of point-missing, his was wider than my aforementioned errant 4-iron. For someone in Clarke’s position, you have to ask yourself two things: 1) Does the move represent progress? (It’s subjective, of course, but it’s difficult to make a case that says it doesn’t.) And, 2) How does the move impact his golf experience? The answer to that second question is right up there alongside the five-years-ago debate about and subsequent vote on same-sex marriage.
Golf might just be better off without Mr Clarke, however it won’t be better off in the stuck-in-the-past era he wishes to see extended. Golf in 2022 and beyond needs to find ways to be more inclusive, welcoming and open to innovation. Providing flexibility in teeing options, while a minor factor in the grand scheme of things, is but one step towards a greater goal of leaving behind any perceptions of stuffiness and rigidity. Who knows, perhaps Lachlan Clarke might someday venture back to golf and even try playing from the red tees. And – shock, horror – he might even enjoy the game more playing forward.
