Tee It Forward

The good news is we painted up the boat cleat tee markers this week. The bad news is the rain we were supposed to get while painting these did not come until today. When you live and die by the weather sometimes you are a hero and sometimes a goat. Because of this great forecast a few people had a chance to play the course without any markers at all and that would have been the ultimate chance to Tee It Forward. Did you? The initiative is simple: play the distance that gives you a chance to score. The fact is everyone enjoys the game more when not tortured by length, deep rough, crazy fast greens, excessive water or bunker hazards etc. Without question today's clubs and balls make the game easier. The driving distance for someone with a high swing speed is just stupid at 250-300+ yards. The clubs are more forgiving of errant shots. There are so many choices for balls there has to be one that is perfect for everyone. Yet the average player is still an 18-22 handicap or something along those lines. Any course constructed in the last decade or so has multiple tee boxes to choose from. They stretch the course to 7,000 yards or more but also allow for shorter courses for beginners, women, seniors, players of all abilities. How we get people to pick the right tee for them is the hard part. I cannot tell you how many rounds I have played from 6800 yds and above and felt tortured. All because some idiot in the group wanted to play the tips!

Chris painted up the new scheme

The initiative is simple: play the distance that gives you a chance to score.

flower stand on Franklin street

Mink Meadows was constructed in 1936. This is the tail end of the classical design era. It was still a ground game and the courses played firm and fast as watering practices and maintenance practices were a lot different to put it mildly. We have added many tee boxes over the years. Most were to add variation from front nine to back. Many added length and a couple shortened it for the forward tees. As we continue to add more forward tees we gain the ability to create a middle set of markers. I loath to call these senior tees because the Tee It Forward movement is not age or gender bias. We no longer have stigma associated with our colors here. We will refer to the colors simply as Front (red), Middle (green), and Back (blue). To eliminate the public male golfer arriving and wanting to play the "back"/longest tee here and playing blue/blue I tried to come up with a scheme that would fix that and also avoid having six colors with the addition of our new middle tees. The plan is simple: carry the front nine color to the back and all three sets share the same neutral color. So back nine markers are: Front (red/white), Middle (green/white), & Back (blue/white). This is mostly confusing for our male members who were accustomed to playing white markers as front and blue markers as back. It was decided this would be an easier transition than three new colors. We shall see. It was impossible to time a new score card with the painting of tee markers and opening of the new tees so bear with us as we get everything in sync. The two new courses (Red; Red/White & Green; Green/White) need to be rated by the MGA. And the plan is that we can actually have all tee sets in the system so you could play any variation and still enter it as a valid score towards your handicap. For instance I cannot wait to play the course for maximum length variation Red - Blue/White. This would give some of us a potentially drivable par four and a swing on 7/16 from 93 yds to 194 yds. Sounds like fun doesn't it?  As part of this change we also moved the reds to the forward most tee box on every hole. This was done to have a short nine for beginners and Sr women. It will also add variation to the front set of tee markers. I whipped up the middle set today out of old style markers as I wait for the new boat cleats to come in. There are also many markers next to each other to save teeing space until we open the newest forward tee or construct one. It is a work in progress. So come out and enjoy a round and simply pick a color scheme and have fun.