When you can complain

I’ve developed a little rule I think clubs ought to follow after a renovation or restoration, or even after they’ve just opened. Golfers should not be allowed to complain about the course until they’ve played it from one tee forward of where they normally play from.

Invariably, a new course, or a much-revised one, will spark issues, concerns and some disgruntlement from members and other regular players. It’s in the nature of the work — whether it concerns the extent of the grow in, the placement and shaping of a bunker, or a green that seems too severe because it didn’t handle the shot played onto it and left a player hopeful for a birdie struggling to make a double bogey.

One of the strongest lessons I learned from running a course ratings platform was that it’s very hard for golfers to distinguish the architecture and maintenance of a golf course from how well — or how poorly — they played. Because golfers, like people everywhere, are reluctant to take responsibility for their shortcomings, they seem prone to displace the disappointment onto external factors beyond their immediate control. And what better place to project one’s unhappiness than onto the varied, unpredictable and occasionally arbitrary playing surface of golf holes?

There’s a complex, two-step process required not to succumb to this temptation. First, one must be self-conscious and mature enough to examine critically one’s own swing failures and weaknesses. Second, one needs a fairly well-trained eye to discern flaws or creases in the playing surface that truly are unreasonable or overdone. This latter stage is all the more difficult to achieve because most golf courses, or at least the well-designed ones, usually offer choices in terms of strategic options.

All too often, in my experience, architects and superintendents take the burden of a verbal beatdown over design elements, hazards and flora that could have easily been voided via a properly struck shot or a decision about achievement more in line with the players’ actual skill level. In the process, the golf course gets viewed less as an aesthetic chess board and more as a battlefield of hidden and arbitrary dangers.

The simplest way to counter this is to ask the would-be plaintiff if he or she has ever played the course from a different perspective. It’s probably too much to ask that they simply be smarter. More easily achievable is simply to play the course from a less taxing length — let’s say, one set of tees ahead of where they normally start.

It’s less a fix and more like enabling someone to adopt an entirely new perspective. Perhaps they’ll be open-minded about the experience and allow themselves the opportunity to hit a few more greens in regulation than they would from 400 yards farther back. From different landing areas they’ll at least see more of the hole from a new vantage point that might make them feel more comfortable and engaged in the process of evaluating options.

It’s not easy to break with old habits and to experience the golf course from tees more compatible with one’s actual playing skill. Guys, for instance, are reluctant to move from 6,001 yards to 5,800 yards because it suggests they are achieving more senior status. And the game of far too many — I’m tempted to say most — women is ruined because they tend to play a social game from the same tee, even if one of them averages 185 yards off the and two of them are lucky to hit it 110.

My preferred yardage is 6,100 and I never have any pretense of being able to play from 6,600 yards even when it means being the loner from the white tees when the rest of the fourball is playing from the blues. At the same time, I must admit how much more fun it is for me to play from around 5,750 yards, because my average 190- to 210-yard drive puts me in a position where I can see the intended strategy of the hole and the hazards are far more manageable.

The problem for forward-tee players is compounded because at too many courses the up tees are still 5,300-plus yards, meaning the vast majority of players from those markers do not hit a par 4 or par 5 in regulation all year. Like everyone else behind them, they would greatly benefit from forward tees totaling 4,600 yards and letting everyone else move up from their normal zone.

The goal is to get golfers to play more realistically spaced tees. While it’s hard to solve universal problems all at once, at least a piece of the puzzle can be addressed by the rule I glibly recommend.

Until you play the course from the next set of tees forward of where you are accustomed, your complaints are banished to silence.