Which Tees Should You Actually Play?

• Most amateurs play too far back. Comparing self-reported skill to national driving-distance data shows a big gap between where most golfers tee it up and where the numbers say they belong.
• Find your real number first. Average your last 5 to 10 rounds of drives, not your one big bomb from last summer.
• Multiply by 28. Driving distance times 28 gives you a recommended total course yardage, based on the PGA's Tee It Forward framework.
• Cross-check it. A second formula, 5-iron carry distance times 36, should land you in a similar range.
• Playing forward isn't cheating. It's a scoring and pace-of-play decision, and the data backs it up.

Tee selection is the most-ignored scoring decision in amateur golf. Golfers will agonize over a $500 driver fitting, a new putter, a launch monitor session to fix their swing, and then walk to the very back markers out of habit, or because that's where they've always played, or because the forward tees feel like an admission of something. The data says most of them are leaving strokes on the table before they've hit a single shot.

Here's what the research actually shows, and a formula you can run in under a minute to find the tee that fits your actual game rather than the one that flatters your ego.

Find your real average driving distance

The first step isn't complicated, but it's the one almost everyone skips: figure out your real average total driving distance, not your best-ever drive with the wind at your back.

Most golfers anchor on a personal record. That 280-yard (256m) bomb from three summers ago becomes the number they use to pick a tee, even though it happened once, downwind, off a cart path kick. The number that actually matters is your average across your last 5 to 10 rounds, factoring in every drive, including the pulled ones, the thin ones, and the ones that found the first cut.

If you use a GPS watch or a rangefinder regularly, this is easy: pull up your last several rounds and average the total distance (carry plus roll) on your tee shots. A GPS watch like the Garmin Approach S12 logs shot distances automatically round after round, which removes the guesswork and the flattering memory bias entirely. A laser rangefinder such as the Bushnell Tour V7 Shift does the same job in reverse, letting you measure exactly how far your ball finished from a known point so you can back-calculate the drive. Either way, the point is the same: track your real distance round to round instead of trusting memory.

If you don't have a device, a rough proxy works too: note your ball's landing spot relative to a fairway bunker, sprinkler head, or 150-yard marker on a handful of holes, then average what you find. It won't be exact, but it'll be closer to reality than your best drive ever.

Compare to your handicap bracket

Once you have a real number, it helps to see where it sits against the field. Arccos, which tracks shot data from more than 5 million rounds and nearly 10 million driver tee shots logged by over 37,000 golfers in 2025, publishes an annual driving distance report broken out by handicap. Total distance in the report means carry plus rollout on par 4s and 5s, the same way most golfers think about "how far I hit it." The 2026 edition gives a clear picture of how much that number varies by skill level, and it breaks out benchmarks for both men and women golfers, not just one default.

That's a 63-yard (58m) gap between a low single-digit handicap and a 30-plus handicapper on the men's side, and a 75-yard (69m) gap on the women's side, on the same measurement, with the same equipment era, across a huge sample of real rounds. If your own average lands closer to the bottom of your column, playing a tee set built for the top of that column is going to make the course play far longer than its listed yardage suggests, and that's before three-putts and penalty strokes get involved.

Find your row, read across to your gender's column, and that's your benchmark. The formula in the next section works off your own distance directly too, so you don't need to land exactly on a bracket line to use it, the table just tells you whether your number is in the normal range for your handicap or an outlier worth double-checking.

Do the math: the tee-selection formula

This is the part that turns "I think I play too far back" into an actual number.

The formula: your average total driving distance times 28 gives you a recommended total course yardage.

So if your real average is 224 yards (205m), the math looks like this: 224 × 28 = 6,272 yards (5,735m). A course, or a specific tee set, that adds up to somewhere near that total is the one built for your game. If your average is 181 yards (166m): 181 × 28 = 5,068 yards (4,634m), which is a considerably shorter tee set than most public courses' back markers.

This lines up with the PGA of America's Tee It Forward initiative, which built a recommended-tee table around the same idea: match total course yardage to what a player actually hits, rather than to tradition or ego. The PGA's guidance groups golfers by average drive and recommends a corresponding yardage range for their tee, and the times-28 formula is a fast way to land inside that range without digging through a full table.

Cross-check with a second formula: multiply your 5-iron carry distance by 36. If you carry a 5-iron 160 yards (146m), for example, that works out to 160 × 36 = 5,760 yards (5,267m). This formula uses a club you likely have more consistent data on than your driver, since 5-iron carry doesn't vary as wildly shot to shot. If the two formulas land within a few hundred yards of each other, you've got a reliable range. If they're wildly apart, it usually means your driving-distance average is skewed by a small sample or a few standout shots, and it's worth logging a few more rounds before trusting the number.

Either formula gets you within shouting distance of the right tee. Neither needs to be exact. The goal is picking a set that's broadly right, not chasing a number to the yard.

The ego check

Here's the part the formula can't fix: even golfers who run the numbers and see the answer clearly still walk to the tips.

Playing forward isn't cheating. A course's yardage is set by whoever designed and rated it, using assumptions about driving distance that, per the Arccos data above, only really apply to golfers in roughly the top quarter of the handicap spectrum. A course rating and slope are calculated for specific tees for a reason. Playing a set that matches your actual distance doesn't lower the degree of difficulty of the golf; it just removes the artificial extra difficulty of playing a course that's effectively 500 to 1,000 yards longer than it needs to be for you.

There's a pace-of-play argument here too, and it's a real one, not an excuse. A group hitting from tees that are too far back takes longer par 4s and turns them into three-shot grinds, which slows every group behind them. The USGA and PGA have both pushed forward-tee initiatives partly for this reason: shorter approach shots mean more greens hit in fewer strokes, which means faster rounds for everyone on the course, not just the group playing forward. I'll own this one myself: my instinct still pulls toward the tee marker that looks the most "serious," even when my own numbers say I'd score better and move faster from a box or two forward. That pull isn't data, it's ego, and it's worth naming so you can catch it in yourself too. The fix isn't complicated: run the formula, pick the tee it points to, and reassess it once or twice a season as your game changes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I don't have a good sense of my average driving distance?

Is playing a forward tee really not cheating?

Does the times-28 formula work the same way for women golfers?

How often should I recheck which tee I should play?

If you want an easy way to start tracking your real numbers, the Garmin Approach S12 logs shot distances automatically round after round, and the Bushnell Tour V7 Shift does the same job from the laser side, both covered in full in our reviews. The Tour V7 Shift is available on Amazon if you want to start logging real distances this season.