Moving up a set of tees: the yardage that suits your carry, summer and winter

Walk past the first tee of almost any British club on a Sunday morning and count how many four-balls are playing from further back than their golf deserves. Far more golfers are on a course that is too long for them than too short, and it is the cheapest problem in the game to solve. No lesson, no new driver, just a different set of markers.

What keeps people back is not arithmetic but pride, and a vague worry that it will upset their handicap. Neither holds up. This guide runs through the numbers, the objection, what the World Handicap System does with a score from the forward tees, and how to try it on a British course without any fuss.

What the course designer assumed about you

A 6,600-yard parkland course is laid out for a player who reaches most par 4s with a drive and a mid iron. The greens are shaped and guarded for a ball arriving high and steep with iron spin. The fairway bunkers are placed where a good drive finishes, and the greenside bunkers are cut to catch an approach that is slightly off line, not one that is thirty yards short.

Now send a golfer who carries the driver 200 yards to those same tees. They are sixty yards behind the landing zone the architect had in mind, facing 180 yards into a green built to reject a low running hybrid. Do that fourteen times and the round is a test of stamina. It is no coincidence that so many cards fall apart from the 13th onwards.

The damage compounds. A miss from 180 yards is bigger than a miss from 140, which leaves a longer chip, which leaves a longer putt. The par the hole was offering becomes a bogey, and the bogey quite often becomes a double.

A rule of thumb for choosing

Take your average driver carry and multiply it by 28. The answer is roughly the total course length that suits you:

• 200 yards of carry points to a course of about 5,600 yards.
• 230 yards points to about 6,400 yards.
• 250 yards points to about 7,000 yards.

Then look at the scorecard and pick the set of tees closest to your number. On many British scorecards the sets are still named by colour, so you may be choosing between, say, white, yellow and red, each with its own yardage printed alongside.

Two warnings about the input. Use carry, not total distance. A drive that runs forty yards down a baked links fairway in August will stop dead in a soft parkland fairway in November, and a British winter strips away almost all the roll. And use your average, not the best drive you can remember. A golfer who thinks they hit it 250 but carries it 215 will choose a course about a thousand yards too long, which is exactly the mistake the rule is meant to stop.

Measure the number properly

You need an honest figure, and a range with ball tracking gives you one in twenty minutes. Plenty of British ranges now have it. Hoebridge Golf Centre in Surrey runs a floodlit driving range with Trackman in every bay, and Trafford Golf Centre in Manchester has 53 bays with Toptracer. A personal launch monitor does the same job, and so does a flag at a known distance checked with a rangefinder.

Hit ten drives. Discard the two longest and the two shortest, and average the remaining six. If you use a shot-tracking system on the course, a season of real drives gives an even more honest average than any single range session.

What happens to your round when you move up

The approach shots start coming from distances you can actually play. Greens begin to hold, because a ball coming in on a 7-iron flight lands steeply enough to stop. Par 5s turn into three comfortable shots rather than four scrappy ones, and the third is a full wedge rather than an awkward half-shot.

Golfers who try it tend to describe the same thing: for the first time, the course plays like the golf they watch on television. Drive, iron, putt. That is the point. Tour professionals look good partly because they are always within reach of the green, and being within reach is decided by the tee you choose far more than by talent.

The pace of play improves too, for simple mechanical reasons. Every shot saved removes a walk, a club choice, a practice swing and a wait for the group in front. Take a shot per hole away from each player in a four-ball and the saving across 18 holes is substantial.

A typical par 4, played from two sets of tees

Take a 400-yard hole from the back markers and 340 yards from the next set forward. The golfer carries a driver 200 yards, gets a little run on a firm summer fairway, and hits a 7-iron 140.

	From 400 yards	From 340 yards
Drive finishes	About 210 yards, in play	About 210 yards, in play
Shot left	190 yards: fairway wood or hybrid	130 yards: 8-iron
Likely result	Short or short-sided, a pitch and two putts	On the green or on its safe side
Usual score	Bogey, sometimes worse	Par, sometimes bogey

Across ten par 4s the difference is not a shot or two. It changes the shape of the whole card. It also explains why moving forward rarely produces a dramatic drop on the first attempt: the gain comes from the doubles that vanish, not from a sudden stream of birdies.

Getting past the pride

Moving forward feels like admitting something, and that feeling is the real obstacle, so it deserves an answer rather than a lecture.

The answer is proportion. A tour player who carries the ball 300 yards and plays a championship links of well over 7,000 yards is facing a course that is, relative to their distance, no longer than a 5,600-yard course is for a 200-yard hitter. Moving up is not playing a lesser game. It is playing the same game at your own scale.

There is a quieter objection, that the yardage you play from says something about who you are as a golfer. It says nothing that your scorecard does not already say more clearly, and at most clubs the back markers are reserved for a small minority of rounds in any case.

Your handicap copes perfectly well

Under the World Handicap System, used across Great Britain and Ireland since the switch from the old CONGU scheme, every rated set of tees carries two numbers. The Course Rating is the score a scratch golfer would be expected to return from those tees. The Slope Rating describes how much harder the course plays for a bogey golfer than for a scratch player; slope values run from 55 to 155, with 113 representing a course of standard relative difficulty.

Your Handicap Index is converted into a Course Handicap for the tees you are playing, using the slope and the difference between the Course Rating and par. A score from the forward tees therefore converts into a score differential on a level footing with a score from the back. A 79 from 5,600 yards and an 85 from 6,600 yards can be worth very much the same to your record, because the ratings already account for the difference.

So you are not flattering your handicap by moving up, and you are not gaining an edge in competition. What changes is the length of your afternoon and how much you enjoy it. Clubs normally publish their rating tables, sometimes on the course pages of their websites, as Hoebridge does, and your club’s handicap software or the national association app applies them for you.

In a competition where players use different tees, the committee sets the terms and the handicap calculation deals with any difference in par and rating. If you want to play a forward set in a club event, ask the competition secretary rather than assuming it cannot be done.

Mixed groups, combined tees

Nothing requires a group to play from the same markers, and a mixed four-ball is usually more enjoyable when it does not. Put a thirty-shot spread of ability on one set of tees and you get two players having a lovely morning and two grinding.

Some courses also rate combined sets, mixing forward and back tees hole by hole, with their own rating and slope. They often appear on the card without anyone promoting them, so ask in the pro shop. They suit a golfer caught between two sets: long par 3s come forward, short par 4s stay back.

For beginners and juniors the logic runs further still. There is every reason for a new golfer to start at the 150-yard marker for their first few months. Golf that feels possible is golf that gets played again.

Winter changes the answer

The right tees in June may be the wrong tees in January. British courses in winter play longer than the card says: the fairways are soft, the air is cold and heavy, and a drive that ran twenty yards in summer plugs where it lands. Many clubs also move play onto winter tees or mats for part of the year to protect the teeing grounds.

If your summer carry puts you between two sets, choose the forward one from November to March. Treat it as the seasonal equivalent of taking an extra club into the wind.

Where to try forward tees in Britain

Pay-and-play and municipal courses are the least self-conscious place to experiment. Nobody is watching, and the starter has seen everything. Look at the scorecard before you book: most courses list every set of tees with its yardage.

Your own club is where the change matters most, because it is where you play most of your golf. Ask the professional or the handicap secretary which rated sets exist and whether combined tees are available.

Courses you visit on holiday are where the right tees make the biggest difference. Unfamiliar layouts, often longer and more heavily bunkered than your own, reward being in range of the greens.

For the measurement, a ball-tracking range such as those at Hoebridge or Trafford, or a fitting session, gives you your carry in half an hour.

Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any course, range or retailer named here, and earns no commission.

Try it for one round

• Measure your average driver carry over ten swings, discarding the best and worst.
• Multiply by 28 and find the set of tees closest to the answer on the card.
• Play one full round from there and note the score and the time taken.
• Count how many approaches you hit with a 7-iron or less, and compare with a normal round.
• In winter, when the ball stops rolling, go one set further forward if you are in between.
• With a mixed group, ask whether the course has rated combined tees.

Very few golfers who try this properly go back. Those who do have at least made the choice with a number rather than by habit, and that is the entire argument: play the course that was built for the shots you actually hit.