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A few years ago, Golf Digest’s net stroke-play tournament featured a unique twist. Rather than have everyone play from the same set of tees, players could choose the tees they wanted, and their allotment of strokes would be adjusted accordingly. The further back you went, the more strokes you got. Move up, and you got fewer.

The broad selection of tee boxes proved a sort of Rorschach test on golfers’ mindsets. Some staffers played the standard tees, while a few boldly went all the way back to 7,100 yards and grabbed a fistful of additional strokes. I went in the opposite direction. In moving up, I was electing for fewer strokes, but figured it’d be fun, and scoring would be easier.



Turns out we were only partially right. I finished near the bottom of the pack.

That day, and in ensuing experiments playing shorter yardage, the consistent takeaway has been that moving up tees is a welcome change of pace. But it doesn’t always make the game easier. If anything, it challenges you to be better in ways you probably overlook.

“It’s probably the best thing you can do when learning how to score,” recent U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau said last year.

First, the obvious: Shorter yardage means less club into greens, which means a better chance of hitting greens in regulation, and more birdie looks as a result. Why would this be complicated? Because nothing in golf is that easy.