Know your yardages. Play to your scoring potential, not your ball-striking potential.
There is one decision you make every time you play golf. Before you decide what club to choose. Or what shot shape you’re going to try to accomplish. And this one decision is probably the biggest influence on how you’ll play golf any time you play. What is that decision? Which tee box will you play from that day? And in most cases, you’re playing the wrong tees.
For the most part, amateur golfers make this decision based on emotions and expectations. Not the facts. I’ve spent more than 30 years training Orlando golfers of every skill and ability level. Without a doubt, the discussion you have with yourself about which tee box you’ll play will produce faster scoring improvement than anything else I can do as a coach. And you can do for yourself. Playing the correct tee box creates better scores and more enjoyment faster than any swing change you could make. Faster than buying the latest and greatest driver. Deciding which tee box to play costs nothing and requires no practice. Yet it is the piece of advice golfers resist most.
The reason why you’re playing the wrong tees is very simple. You’re choosing the tee box you play based on your career best shots. Not the shot you hit on any average Saturday morning with a little wind in your face. These golfers get this decision wrong every time because they choose a golf course based on their potential as a ball striker. Not your potential as a golfer to convert scoring opportunities. Two completely different potentials. One is based on facts. The other is based on smoke and mirrors.
I’ll show and prove the difference between the two in this blog post. The data backs it up. And some tips to influence your first decision positively each time you head to the golf course. So you don’t find yourself playing from the wrong tees.
Ball Striking Potential and Scoring Potential Are Not the Same Thing
Every golfer I’ve ever coached has a highlight reel in their head. The 260-yard drive that split the fairway. The 5-iron they flushed to the back pin. Those shots happened, so the golfer treats them as evidence of who they are.
Those shots are not evidence. Those golf shots are anomalies. Each is a one-time occurrence. For years, I’ve told my clients that one time is an anomaly. Two times is an accident. But three times, that could be the beginning of a trend. It’s the anomaly you keep dreaming of that is one of the reasons why you’re playing the wrong tees.
Your ball-striking potential is your ceiling on your best day with your best swing. Your scoring potential is something else entirely. It is the score available to you when every hole hands you a shot you can actually own. A shot that provides you with a yardage you have the right club for. An approach shot you have hit hundreds of times successfully, without thinking about it.
What does the difference between the two potentials look like? You’ve probably witnessed it. The golfer measuring potential ball-striking ability says they can reach a 440-yard par 4 in two shots because they did so on the same hole in 2019. The scoring potential golfer is the golfer who states in the grill room that from 165 yards they can hit 50% of the greens in regulation. So give them the chance to play from 165 more often. The first golfer is telling a story. The second golfer is actually shooting a score.
When you play a golf course longer than your golf skills can support, you’re not challenging yourself. You’re removing the shots you are good at from the round and replacing them with shots you are bad at. That is not a test of your ability. It’s a guarantee you won’t get to use the shots you’re best at. And a high probability of failure.
It Starts With One Number: How Far You Actually Hit It
You’ll continue playing the wrong tees until you know your real driving distance. Not your best, your average.
The most reliable public data on this comes from Arccos, a partner of mine for several years, whose annual Driving Distance Report is built from millions of tracked tee shots by real golfers on real golf courses. I use Arccos data with my clients. I sell Arccos in the Arccos Caddie Bundle in my store for exactly this reason. It is measured, not guessed.
Here is what the 2026 report says:
- All male golfers average 224.1 yards off the tee.
- Men at a 0.0 to 4.9 handicap average 244 yards.
- Men at 30-plus average 181 yards.
- Women at 0.0 to 4.9 average 220 yards. Women at 30-plus average 145 yards.
Read that male average again. 224 yards. If you believe you are a 260-yard driver, you are almost certainly comparing your best drive of the month to somebody else’s average, and there is one more thing working against you here in Central Florida. Arccos shows a 10-handicap averaging 220.5 yards at sea level and 239.7 yards above 5,000 feet. Most golfers don’t play golf at high elevations. And if you live in Florida or play a lot of golf in Florida, chances are your numbers sit at the bottom of every national average, not the middle.
One Important Note on How Arccos Measures Distance
Arccos relies on GPS to plot you on Earth each time you make a swing. It records where the ball was struck and where it came to rest, so every number it reports is total distance, carry plus rollout.
For a driver, that is exactly the number you want, because rollout is part of the tee shot.
For irons and wedges, carry distance is what matters most. Because carry decides whether you finish on the green or in the water short of it, use a launch monitor like FlightScope to measure and obtain your average carry numbers.
If you want your own numbers instead of a national average, Arccos does that. If you currently use Arccos and want an evaluation of your game from your statistics, contact me and provide the email address you use to log in to Arccos. I’ll review your numbers and tell you exactly what tee box you should play from.
What Playing the Wrong Tees Is Actually Costing You
Let me make this as clear and as simple as I can. Take a 440-yard par 4, which is a perfectly ordinary hole from a back tee. Now hand it to the average male golfer who drives it 224 yards.
The same par 4 from two tees, for the same golfer hitting the same drive.
After a good drive, he has 216 yards left. A 15-handicap’s longest iron travels about 186 yards. So no iron in his bag covers the shot. He is hitting a 3-wood or a long hybrid off the turf, from 216 yards, into a green that was designed to be attacked with a wedge. That is arguably the hardest shot in golf. And when playing the back tees, this golfer is asking themselves to hit ten or twelve of these shots every round of golf they play.
Move him up one tee. The hole is now 390 yards. Same swing, same 224-yard drive, and the number left is 166. That is probably a 6-iron for this particular golfer. A club he owns, practices with, and has hit greens with most of his golfing life.
Nothing about this golfer’s swing changed. His scoring potential improved by several strokes by changing where he played from. Instead of playing from the wrong tees.
Why These Gaps Are Conservative, Not Exaggerated
The amateur iron distances above come from Shot Scope, which reports performance averages that exclude mishits. They describe a well-struck shot, not a typical one.
Shot Scope also reports total distance, same as Arccos, which further flatters the amateur on approach shots.
Both choices make the golfer look longer than he is. The real gap is wider than what I have shown you.
So Which Tees Should You Play?
The USGA and the PGA of America answered this question years ago. When they introduced ‘Tee It Forward,’ the guideline was simple. Find your honest average driving distance and play the tee set closest to the matching course yardage. Below I’ve mapped those guidelines onto the tee sets at Omni ChampionsGate National, where I coach most of my Orlando golf lessons.
Tee It Forward guidelines mapped to the tee sets at Omni ChampionsGate National.
Look at the highlighted row. A 224-yard driver belongs on a golf course between 5,800 and 6,000 yards. At National, that is the White tees at 5,937. Not the Blue at 6,427. Certainly not the Black at 7,128.
Most of the men I watch tee off from the Blue are playing 500 yards more golf course than their driver supports.
The bottom two rows deserve honesty too. A man averaging 181 yards and a woman averaging 145 yards are both being asked to play a golf course that does not exist at most facilities, mine included. If that is you, the answer is not to grind it out from the Red tees. Play from the 200-yard or 150-yard fairway markers, keep your own score, and enjoy your round. Don’t let the golf course have a vote on whether you have fun or not!
Does Moving Up Ruin My Handicap?
No. This is the objection I hear most about playing from a forward tee. Basing your decision to play a certain tee box based on this common misunderstanding is another reason why you’re playing the wrong tees.
Every rated tee set has its own Course Rating and Slope, and your Course Handicap adjusts for the set you played. The system already accounts for the yardage. In essence, every tee box is its own separate golf course.
Post the score. Your Handicap Index stays honest. Your afternoon gets better.
The Best Trade at ChampionsGate Is Not the One You Would Guess
Because I have the scorecard for my home course, I can do something better than quote a survey. The USGA rating system already tells you the expected score from every tee set. Course Rating is the expected score for a scratch player, and Bogey Rating is the expected score for a bogey player, so the drop between two tee sets is the strokes you should expect to save.
I ran all three men’s moves at National. The result surprised me.
Strokes saved per 100 yards given up, 15-handicap man, Omni ChampionsGate National.
Blue to White is the best trade on the property, and by a wide margin. You give up only 490 yards, the smallest reduction of any move, and you save 4.1 strokes. That is essentially the same saving as dropping 701 yards from the Black tees. In stroke-per-yard terms, it is 0.84 versus 0.57, roughly 50 percent more value.
What the ratings are telling you is that the Blue tees at National play harder relative to their yardage than the card suggests, most likely because of how the hazards and angles come into play from that distance. That is home course knowledge you will not find printed anywhere.
Two caveats worth stating. This is expected-score math from the rating system, not measured outcomes, so it captures only the yardage effect. And the pattern is not uniform: on Blue to White, the benefit climbs with handicap, from 4.1 percent to 4.8 percent, while White to Red stays flat at 5.5 percent for everyone. The middle move rewards the higher handicapper most.
If anything, these numbers understate reality. Ratings can’t measure what happens to your decision-making when every approach is a club you trust. That part shows up on the scorecard too.
Four Drills That Build Real Yardage Knowledge
Knowing your yardages is a skill, and like every skill, it responds to practice. These are the routines I use with clients in my Orlando golf schools. None of them require a full bag of range balls or a whole afternoon. And all can help you avoid one of the reasons why you’re playing the wrong tees.
1. The Full and Half Gapping Session
Take your wedges through your 8-iron. Hit five full swings with each club and five half swings, and record the carry distance of every shot on a launch monitor. Throw out your longest and your shortest. Average the middle three.
That average is your number. Write it down. Most golfers discover two things: their real carry is 10 to 15 yards shorter than they believed, and they have a 30-yard hole in their bag somewhere between their pitching wedge and their sand wedge.
A gapping session takes about 45 minutes to complete and gives you real data to make better decisions. Repeated over time, this session replaces the highlight reel that dominates your current decision-making process.
2. The One More Club Challenge
Pick a target between 140 and 170 yards. Hit it with the club you would normally choose. Then hit it with one more club at about 80 percent effort.
Do this for your 6-iron through 9-iron and your hybrid. Take time to track which version finishes closer. In my experience, the softer swing with more club wins for most average amateur golfers, by a lot! This connects directly to what I wrote in Are You Swinging at 80%? and in You Can Only Swing as Fast as You Can Balance. Speed you cannot control is not distance. It is dispersion.
This purposeful practice session can take as little as 20 minutes and will show you that proper club selection trumps extra effort every time.
3. The Random Number Game
Before you go to the range, write nine random yardages on an index card. Something like 63, 141, 88, 176, 112, 205, 74, 155, 128. Mix them up so they are not in order.
Now hit one ball to each number in the order you wrote them. Just one ball with no do-overs or racks of five balls with the same club. Give yourself a point for every shot that finishes within 10 percent of the target and score the session out of nine.
I like this game, or purposeful practice, a lot. Because it is the closest thing to real golf you can do on a practice tee, because real golf never gives you the same yardage twice in a row. Taking 15 minutes and 9 balls to train your decision-making processes, not your swing, can be the difference between choosing the right club under pressure.
4. The Simulated Round
Pull up your home course on your phone. Play all 18 holes on the range from the tees you are considering.
Hit your tee shot. Then look at the hole yardage, subtract your honest driving distance, and hit the club that actual number demands. Not the club you wish it demanded. Write down what happens. Do it twice, once from your current tees and once from the set one up.
I have never had a golfer finish this exercise and still want to play the back tees. The second card makes the argument better than I can. Unlike a normal round taking 4 hours or more, 45 minutes and 40 golf balls is all it takes to force you to confront the fact that the tee box you choose has a great influence on the approach shots you face.
How Much Distance Can You Realistically Add?
A fair question that any golfer could ask at this point. “If the problem is that I am too short for the tees, why not just get longer?”
You can get longer. I am all for you doing so. But you should know what the honest ceiling looks like before you count on it.
Realistic driver gains at 90 mph clubhead speed, ordered by effort required.
Notice that the cheapest gains are the biggest ones.
Contact quality comes first. Move your smash factor from 1.36 to 1.46, which is the difference between a heel strike and the center of the face, and FlightScope data shows you gain 10 to 16 yards depending on your clubhead speed. That is a free 15 yards sitting on the face of the club you already own. Put impact tape on your driver next time you practice. Or spray the face with foot powder. And find out where the ball is actually making contact with the face of the club.
Setup is next, and it is just as cheap. It can provide the ultimate consistency when repeated properly. Tee the ball higher and move it forward to the inside of your lead heel so the clubhead is traveling upward at impact. Various ball flight monitor research shows a golfer at 90 mph can add as much as 23 yards by changing a downward strike into an upward one. I check this with FlightScope in every driver session, and it is the single most common free yardage I find.
Then equipment. A properly fit driver, meaning the right loft, shaft, and length for your delivery, is typically worth 10 to 20 yards and a meaningful reduction in dispersion. I work with Club Champion on fittings for this reason.
Finally, speed training. Overspeed protocols like SuperSpeed produce a 5 to 8 percent gain in clubhead speed in four to six weeks, with 10 minutes a day, three days a week. At 90 mph, that is roughly 12 to 20 yards, and it is real. It also takes six weeks of consistent work, and the gains overlap with everything above, so do not simply add the numbers together.
The Honest Math
A committed golfer can add 30 to 40 yards over a season through contact, setup, fitting, and speed work. That is real improvement and worth every minute.
It is also about one tee box forward.
Moving up gives you the same relief this afternoon, for free, while you do the work. Do both. And you’ll never ask yourself why you’re playing the wrong tees.
The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
Most golfers who are playing the wrong tees know it. This is not an information problem. It is an ego problem, and I say that with sympathy because I have watched it cost golfers thousands of strokes. It used to cost me strokes too.
So let me reframe it. Playing forward is not a concession. It is the same decision a tour professional makes every single week, except the tour makes it for them. The reason the world’s best players score so well is not only that they strike it better. It is that they are hitting 8-irons and wedges into greens while you are hitting hybrids. Tee It Forward lets you play the same golf course they play, at a scale that fits your driver.
To put this into perspective, I’ll share a personal story. I’ve been practicing what I am preaching for a long time. At my age and with the back issues I face, I can’t practice as often as I’d like. And running a business keeps me from playing as often as I can. Sound familiar?
On a recent trip to Omni Homestead Resort, I played The Cascades Course from the Golf Tees, roughly 5600 yards. With an average driver length of 220 yards, I knew this tee box was the correct tee box to play from. Focusing only on the target I wanted the ball to fly to, not swing mechanics (another discussion worth another blog post or two), I shot 67. I haven’t recorded a round that low in a long time. Previously, playing the white tee box from 6350 yards, the best score I could muster was 77.
Believe me when I tell you I won’t remember the tee box I played in 20 years, but I will remember the score. The same is true of every golfer who shoots a low score. The scorecard does not record which tee you used. It records the number. When you choose the right tee box, your score could be lower.
Your Key Takeaways About Playing the Wrong Tees
- Know your real average driving distance. Not your best drive. Arccos gives you the measured number instead of a guess.
- Match the golf course to your scoring potential. A 224-yard driver belongs on 5,800 to 6,000 yards. When visiting me at Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate, that’s the white tees on the National Course.
- Understand what your tee choice hands you. When playing the wrong tees. you most likely do not have an iron in your bag that can cover the approach shots you’ll face.
- Build your yardage book on carry, not total. Use a launch monitor to measure the carry distances of your scoring irons and wedges. Use the average, not the best shot, as your benchmark to make good decisions when attempting to hit more greens.
- Practice the decision, not just the swing. The Random Number Game and the Simulated Round build the skill that actually shows up on the golf course. Yes, decision-making is a skill you can practice. And playing the wrong tees is preventing you from using good decision making skills when it counts, to hit greens.
- Chase distance the cheap way first. Centered contact and an upward strike are worth more than swinging harder, and they are free.
- Moving up does not hurt your handicap. But playing the wrong tees will. Every rated tee set has its own Course Rating and Slope. The handicap system adjusts itself.
Conclusion
You are one honest conversation away from a lower score. The conversation has nothing to do with your golf swing. It has more to do with the simple decision you make every time you play golf. And to avoid playing the wrong tees.
Check your ego at the door and play just one round from one tee box forward. I think you’ll surprise yourself at the end of the round with how many par opportunities you faced, as well as an increase in birdie opportunities.
Stop Playing the Wrong Tees! And stop making excuses to continue playing the wrong tees!
If you want help finding your real yardages and choosing the tees that let you score, that is exactly what I do. On-course coaching can help you make the right tee box choice as well as the right yardage and club choices you will encounter when you have more opportunities to score.
If you’re not measuring your average carry distances with scoring irons, I suggest you schedule a coaching session with us to do so. If you don’t know the average total length of your drives, it’s best you learn those now, with the help of me or one of my coaches, to help you understand the math behind your average drive length and which tee box you should play.
Individual instruction, Custom Coaching Programs, Golf Schools, and Orlando Golf School Vacations are all available at Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate. And with me during my summer coaching residency at Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia.
Visit johnhughesgolf.com/contact or email john@johnhughesgolf.com with the subject line “I Want to Know My Real Yardages.”
