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Distance killing courses?

The course I play has an issue with length in attracting players. From the tips it is less than 6300 yards and, even though it is narrow, has lots of water and sand, and has small greens, people bypass it because it is not a "7000 yard test".

This has raised the expense of maintaining the course by adding tee boxes and more fairway to maintain. The added tees will rarely get played but were needed for marketing purposes.
 
I don't think it's killing courses but I do think it's forcing some courses to expand and lengthen some holes. Even our home course is extending a tee on the first hole which is a fairly short Par 5 and makes it much more difficult to go for the green in two, that's not a bad thing because it makes the accuracy of the drive that much more important!
 
On an average day it wouldn't be an issue at all since my driver is so erratic. In the cases it has been an issue, short/links style courses when my driver is "on". Taking your 2nd 40-50 yards out is not ideal for a challenge so at the turn I moved to the furthest back tees. I still drove one to the edge of the green on one hole. Hot day with the wind and nailed it. Knew I hammered it at impact, did the drop the club, arms raised in the air pose, lol! It's the simple things in life....a well stuck golf ball off the tee.
 
DEAL! Dont forget this one Gray.
Ole Gray said:
Come down and play with KellyBo and myself on our new course. We'll let ya play the white tees and if you can break 90, we'll take ya out to the pig & poke for a nice evening out!
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It kills courses for a VERY small percentage of the golfing population. If you can, with 90+% certainty, blow a drive over a dogleg to the green. If even an average drive flies the fairway bunkers. In practice, this means pros. For the vast, vast majority of us, this isn't a factor. I simply cannot fly a ball over most trouble. I play around doglegs. Courses that pros and bombers laugh at, I find a challenge.

I don't think that it should be an issue for anyplace pros don't play, and in most cases they just add a set of tees for them as needed.
 
It doesn't kill the course I play. Our club was built in 1927 by Perry Maxwell (Same guy who designed Southern Hills in Tulsa). It is 6619 from the tips. The front nine is really tight and has SMALL greens. The back nine is much longer and and still has pretty small greens.
 
I can finally hit a decent drive thanks to buying new clubs and new "expensive" balls. The game has actually become fun and I finally break 100 on a consistent basis and am trying to shoot in the upper 80's. I am now the golfer to beat out of the few different groups I play with. Dial back the distance and you screw up the game of everyone I play with. All of a sudden every "improvement" we have made in our game over the last 10 yrs is shot to pieces. How is that good for golf? Who cares how far the pro's and elite amateurs hit the ball. Just over water the fairways before a match and stop the roll. Don't mess up the game for the masses.
 
Didn't want to start a new thread but what do you guys consider a fair distance on a par 3. I think if a course has one at 200-210 I'm okay with but around 190 I think is a fair distance for me. It's a 5 iron and I still expect to make par.
 
As per a number of the replies in the thread already, I don't think it is just the distance that makes it 'fair', it is also the layout of the hole

I have played courses where they have ranged from 110yds all the way to around 215yds but sometimes the shorter holes have been a lot trickier due to the shape of the green, the hazards that surround it and how the wind can affect the flight of the ball as well

One hole I have played was 150yds to an island green, yet due to the wind that day nobody hit anything less than a 5i and 2 people in our group still managed to put it in the water so distance is not always the challenge
 
Scrap Iron said:
Didn't want to start a new thread but what do you guys consider a fair distance on a par 3. I think if a course has one at 200-210 I'm okay with but around 190 I think is a fair distance for me. It's a 5 iron and I still expect to make par.
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That's why I always look at the par 3's on the scorecard before I decide which tees to play. A 3 wood is acceptable for me but a driver on one isn't.
 
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