Want To Recover Respectability? Play the Forward Tees

I should begin by giving you a profile of my golfing self:

I’m 58 years old, five foot ten inches tall, a flabby 200 pounds, right-handed all the way. In my younger days, I walloped softballs well over outfielders’ heads, ran a mile in around six minutes, kept hockey pucks out of nets using my cat-like reflexes, and made fun of the wimpy-boys who played golf.

Two years ago golf stopped being a wimpy-boys sport when I started playing it. And now, it has grown into an obsession measurable by the extraordinary number of dates and rounds entered into my Yahoo Handicap Tracker.

My son Pete and I began our golf odyssey at around the same time; he, after his fourth (or so) major hockey-related shoulder injury, and I, after my heart bypass surgery. (Golf was ample walking exercise and low-grade aerobics, I reckoned, with enough math thrown in to keep things interesting.) Driven by the desire to perfect his God-given natural talent, Pete bought the best equipment he could afford and took lessons. Inside of a year, he had broken 100 on a moderately difficult course. Playing with a set of Pete’s hand-me-down clubs, my improvement, though steady, was nowhere near as rapid as his. I stopped taking lessons after the second one, stubbornly determined to develop my own “style.” (Hell, if Stan Musial could hit as well as he did with his wacky stance, why couldn’t I take the same principle and transfer it to the golf course?) Utilizing my “style” to the fullest, I only broke a hundred once last year, and even then, it was on the local par 65 runt. (This year, I’ve already broken 100 three times there, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) My best round to date has been 24 strokes over par.

But I keep learnin’…

On average, my son probably scores about twelve strokes better than me. The main reason is tee shots. Pete regularly drives over two hundred yards from the tee. I’ll drive two hundred yards maybe once or twice a round. I used to frustrate myself by starting from the middle tees. This meant driver, wood, long iron, short iron/wedge and putter, if I was lucky, on par 5’s; driver, long iron, wedge and putter on par 4’s; and driver, wedge and putter on par 3’s. (Yes, driver!) From the git-go, I knew that breaking 100 was a pipe dream from the middle tees on a regulation course, and that, for me at least, shooting in the one-teens was an honorable result. I could never make par 4 and par 5 greens in regulation. All because of my anemic tee shots.

At the local par 70 high-slope mountain course a couple of weeks ago, I decided to swallow my pride and play a round from the men’s forward tees.

The club calls them “senior” tees and designates them gold in color – I guess, to represent the “golden” years. Playing from the golds shortened the course by 300 yards, and you could throw the ball onto the green from a couple of the par three gold tee boxes.

But after my round from the golds, I’d never had so much fun on a course in my short golf-life.

See, an amazing thing happened when I moved to the forward tees: my drives increased in distance.

I no longer felt the need to crush my tee shots. And by easing up on my swing, my drives went straighter. And by hitting the ball on the sweet spot more often, my drives went farther down the fairway. I regularly put my drives to within a hundred yards of the par 4 greens. I began hitting greens in regulation. And my putts, while not improved, no longer were made in desperation. I pared a few holes and bogeyed several more. Sure, there are still two holes on this course I find impossible to navigate, but I keep learnin’…

Now, 100 is a reasonable target score to try and break through. I use more clubs in my bag than on either the runt (I leave my 4, 6, 7 and 9-irons out of my bag when I play there) or when I play from the middle tees (driver, wood, long iron, short iron, wedge, putter – that’s it).

Here’s the best part. I’ve issued a challenge to Pete. I’ve declared that I will beat him scratch from the gold tees if he plays from his usual middle-tee starting points. He has said that he will take up the challenge when he can find the time – we’re hoping it will be next month. I’m looking forward to administering the whoop-ass. He’s walking into my trap.

Look, I’m counting on Pete watching me start from at least twenty or thirty yards in front of him on every hole (over a hundred yards in front on the monster par 5), and this observation will create a “crush” mentality in his head as he tries to make up the yardage difference on every hole with his first shot. His crushed tee shots will become high, arcing slices, drifting into the restricted wetland areas that lie throughout the course grounds, incurring penalty strokes galore for lost balls and hazard drops. I’ll simply work my way down the fairway slow and straight to the greens, short pitching and chipping, and finally, dropping my annoying little par and bogey putts into the cup with frustrating regularity. Then he’ll press more, swing harder, and lose more golf balls in the wetlands. And more strokes on the card.

I’ve not thrown down the gauntlet as much as slammed it into the ground. Pete says he will pick it up. My days of finishing second on the scorecard will soon be over.

So what if it’s from the gold tees? He's a better golfer than I am, and he would never give me an advantage he thought he couldn't overcome.

My son is every bit as competitive as I am. The apple, in this instance, didn't roll far from the tree trunk. Not at all.

I’ll keep you posted as events progress.