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Playing from the Tips?

wubears71

wubears71

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I am curious how many people routinely play from the tips when the tips are 7000 yards plus?

I ask because I played 36 holes yesterday - one round from the blues that was set at around 6500 yards and one from the tips set at around 7300 yards. I played the tips after the forecaddy suggest I do with my distance and accuracy with the driver.

I am LONG off the tee. Here were my driving distances from yesterday.
68a2710457c11b16f86292ca4071a753.jpg


What I'm finding is that at 6500 yards I'm pretty much hitting driver, 58 deg on almost all par 4s and driver, mid wedge into most par 5s. When I moved back to the tips I was usually hitting my 5 to 8 iron into the green. I shot an 85 vs an 81 from 6500 yards but it wasn't because of the extra distance necessarily. The only hold I struggled with was the 247 yard par 3 - water to the left, Red stakes to the right and back - hit a 4 wood and has the distance but it went too far right.

I only ask this question because I don't want to be 'that guy' who plays from the tips. Am I crazy for thinking about making the jump? I love crushing the ball but my mid irons get very little use during a round and frankly I'm much better hitting the green with mid irons than partial 58 deg swings.

Another option is to start teeing off with long irons, hybrids, etc. the thing I don't like about that is that I like hitting driver.

Any thoughts and feedback is much appreciated.


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I wish I had seen the 2,751,671 yard drive.
 
only when forced, if it's a tournament. There is a county tournament that alternates the opening round between 2 different courses. The one course tips just over 7000 yards.

Are you crazy for making the jump? Not if you can handle it. Play what you want that makes the game enjoyable to you.
 
I do not, not when it's that long. I like to be around 6,500. That's the most fun for me. Some courses that's the tips, some it's not.
Erky said:
I wish I had seen the 2,751,671 yard drive.
Click to expand...
Much higher than his average of a mere 6,620 :D
 
Play where you feel most comfortable playing and from where you derive the most pleasure from the game. I will not be joining you back there as my best struck drive downhill and with a tailwind may reach your shortest drive...haha
 
To answer the question, I actually don't think playing the tips is that much worse. When I played Lake Nona with Wardy, his friends wanted to play from around 7k yards. I was intimidated at first, but actually handled it just fine. I was just hitting 7 irons into greens I would normally hit a wedge into and stuff like that.
 
I think if you have fun playing from the tips then go for it. I play what I feel comfortable playing and where I will have fun.
 
I shoot about the same from 7,000+ yards or 6,500+ yards. What does that tell ya about my game? I need to get better with my wedges and putter? I'm better with my mid irons?

Played with BigTex last week and played the tips which was probably around 6,700 yards, a little further than what he normally plays. He shot an 82 and should have broke 80 if not for a few missed shots.

Tips are great to play for guys that normally don't if you want to hit more drivers and mid irons AND of course keeping up with the group in front of you.

Take the Play the Tips Challenge today!
 
Don't play them on a regular basis. Some of the guys I play with we have talked about doing periodically to change things up. The play the same course every week so they look for a change
 
I routinely play either the gold (just over 7k) or the tips (7300+) at my course. I enjoy the challenge. The trouble comes often when you are faced with 220+ par 3s. At my course every par 3 is about 200 or more except for one hole which is 180 from the tips but plays about 2 clubs down hill to a wide but very short front to back green guarded by water hazard front and steep hill in the back
 
Why would you not play from the tips? I'm all about playing from the right set of tees... seems like these tees are the best chance to challenge yourself. The one thing I could see being a problem playing the tips is the amount of fairways hit. If you miss 6 out of 10 fairways from the tips, hitting greens ( don't know about typical rough conditions where you play ) will probably be much more difficult. And I'm guessing either short game / putting is probably keeping you from being an ever lower HC?
 
I am a firm believer in playing all tees. Play from 5000 yards every once in a while. Don't be scurrred. It's a good time and will change how you see the course.
 
I don't usually, but it sounds like you can handle it no problem.

The vast majority of holes I can handle from the back tees without much problem distance wise. A 440 yard par 4 or 600 yard par 5 aren't terrible for me. But typically what gets me are the par 3's, and often time the placement of the tee boxes from the back. It seems frequently they have tucked the tips back in the trees where you are teeing off out of a chute, and that just kills me.
 
I regularly play the tips at the courses I frequent. I enjoy the course playing a bit longer than shorter. Personal preference I guess...
 
If I routinely hit anywhere near that far off the tee, I'd routinely play 7000+ tees. You can play from just about anywhere with that distance.
The few times I've played 7000+, I've struggled. Because I'm NOT hitting mid irons, and if my driver is even a touch off I'm not getting on in regulation.

You like hitting driver, you seem to hit it very well. Play it back.
 
I don't have the distance for the tips. 6600 is as far back as I like to go. Anything longer than that and I'm playing for bogey on almost all of the par 4's because I wouldn't be able to reach them in two stokes.
 
Not a chance I play from the tips anymore, too old, too slow of a swing! I generally play from the blues or whites, anything between 5800-6300 works just fine.
 
There are a few courses around me that I play from the tips but the yardage are under 6500. The next tees back are sub 6200 and I find with my current game 6200-6500 provides a fair challenge for me.
 
I'm not good enough and don't hit it far enough to play from the tips. Like Barry said, if I'm further back than about 6500 or 6600, I'm pretty much playing for bogey on a lot of par 4's because I'm hitting long irons and hybrids into a lot of them.

I have played the tips on a local course as it's only 6553 from the longest tees...and it eviscerated me. Not because of distance, but because many of the holes are brutally, mercilessly tight off the tee from there.
 
I play occasionally from the tip of the white tees but that's my limit.
 
If you have fun hitting driver on every hole and don't want to hit partial wedges, then go play the tips and enjoy yourself.
 
I play whatever tees the group I'm playing with wants to play. Sometimes that's the tips, other times it's 1 tee up from where I usually play. Most of the time though I play around the 6,400-6,700 length.

I love to hit my driver, so I'm not a huge fan of shorter courses where it doesn't make sense to hit driver due to trouble.
 
To be honest, I find it easier to play the tips when I play better courses. Here is why:

When I play a course from the forward tees, the fairway usually is widest at around 230-250 range. Anything beyond that usually gets narrower and dicier. IF I do hit the fairway, I have usually nothing more than a wedge in, If I miss, I am in the rough or sand traps...

When I back up to the tips however, that wide landing area is in the 270-290 range and that is where I normally hit my driver to. Even though my 2nd shot will be from a longer distance, I am on the short grass and usually that means I can hit greens pretty easy.

I played Bethpage Black earlier this summer from the back and had one of my better rounds of the year there (79, but a very hard course 152 slope). Played TPC CT this weekend and shot 78 from a 126 rated "Club" tee. Was hitting it straight, but in the rough all day. Just hitting through the wide part and into the junk...
 
I play the tips whenever the others in my group want to or when I'm alone which means about 1/3rd of the time. I'm consider myself average in length for my index which means I don't feel uncomfortable off the back tees until they exceed about 7250 yards. At my course playing the tips makes no difference in my index as the course rating is 2 strokes higher and I score almost exactly 2 strokes higher from the tips. The "regular" set of tees I play has the following distances for the par 4's: 381, 375, 417, 405, 385, 352, 384, 435. It plays to 6550 off these tees and 6994 off the tips.
 
I've played Bethpage Red from the tips, only about 6800 yards. What I do want to do is play the Black course from the PGA tips. They have the 7200y tips and the tee boxes for PGA events are till maintained, so why not?
 
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