Andy Tullis / The BulletinA golfer tees off on No. 10 at the Big Meadow course at Black Butte Ranch while his playing partner watches.

REDMOND —

For much of the golf season, it seemed no hole was short enough to help my balky golf game.

Like many everyday hacks, I found myself digging out of trouble time after time this summer, taking unnecessary chances with little hope of payoff.

Then last week, in what could be my last round of 2014, I was standing in the fairway of the par-5 10th hole at Juniper Golf Course with a 4-iron in my hand about to take aim at a green that seemed utterly reachable in two shots.

A revival of my golf game, you ask?

Not really.

For the first time, I actually put away my macho notions of which golf tee I should play. Instead of playing the longer tees, I chose Juniper’s 5,851-yard white/gold combo tees, which are set some 800 yards shorter than the tees I typically choose at Redmond’s municipal golf course.

Playing the short tees was an experiment of sorts, testing the concept of Tee It Forward, an initiative pushed by the USGA and PGA of America in hopes of making golf more fun for the everyday player.

Owen Osborne, a 71-year-old Oregon Golf Association course rater and Black Butte Ranch golfer, gave me the idea after he recently played the forward tees for the first time to shoot an even-par 72 at hallowed Portland Golf Club. He missed shooting his age by a single stroke after a bogey on 18.

“I had a great time,” Osborne wrote in an email he sent to just about every golfer he knew, including me. “No par 4s over 350 yards, short par 3s, and par 5s that could have been reached if conditions were better. I was able to hit pitching wedges, 9-irons, 8-irons to par-4 greens. It was fun! Something I haven’t been able to do consistently in 30 years.”

Osborne caught a little flak from some friends for using the short tees, but most seemed supportive, he told me later by phone.

To me, it sounded like just the kind of golf round I was looking for after a tough season.

On a unseasonably mild afternoon last week, it took some time to figure out a strategy that made sense for me on the shorter tees at Juniper.

At first, I opted to play conservatively off the tee. On holes at which I would usually hit driver, I was hitting long irons. The problem with that, I found, was that it still left me tough mid-iron shots into Juniper’s challenging greens.

As a result, my score suffered from the same imprecise iron shots that had plagued me all golf season.

I changed my strategy on Juniper’s sixth hole, a beast of a 616-yard par 5 from the green tees that turned into a more docile 504-yard hole from the combo tees I was playing.

I smacked a driver down the fairway, landing my ball short of the infamous hill that cuts off the fairway from the green. Smartly, I laid up with a 7-iron over the hill to set up an easy wedge shot about 85 yards from the hole. On a hole that has literally terrorized me over the years, suddenly I had a gimme par.

Using driver off the tee left me with the kind of shorter approach shots I so craved. I began to feel more comfortable.

Suddenly, there I was with that 4-iron in my hand on the 10th hole with an eagle at stake.

Brimming with confidence after a strong finish on the front nine, I smoked the long iron right on line high into the gray sky at No. 10. The ball sailed a touch long, about 15 feet above the hole, deadening on impact to leave a 20-footer.

The subsequent eagle putt fell short, but still, I tapped in for birdie.

Me, a tap-in birdie?

Indeed, and it would not be my last. Two holes later I drove the green with a 3-wood on the always drivable par-4 12th, which was set at 252 yards — 10 yards shorter than I would typically play.

How could any golfer not smile at such scoring opportunities?

“If more golfers played a more manageable tee, they would have more fun,” Bruce Wattenburger, Juniper’s longtime head golf professional, said to me after my round.

Teeing the ball forward is no golf panacea.

Shorter tees will not help make a golfer a better putter (don’t I know it!). And an imprecise short game will still be punished, as it should be.

Plus, impediments that might not be in range from a back tee suddenly become punitive from a more forward tee. This happened to me when I found a usually unreachable (for me) native area that juts into the fairway on the Juniper’s par-4 11th hole, leading to a triple bogey.

Osborne noticed the same thing when he teed it forward again, this time with a bit less control on the 5,630-yard red/white tees at Black Butte Ranch’s Glaze Meadow than he had enjoyed earlier at Portland Golf Club.

“Traps that I can’t reach from the white tees on the fairway are now reachable from the red tees, so I hit it in the fairway bunker, stuff like that,” Osborne explained in a phone conversation. “They haven’t removed all the trouble just because you moved up 30 yards.”

Still, Osborne and I agree that this will not be the last time we play the forward tees.

For me, it will not be every round. I probably will not even choose to use the forward tees during most rounds.

But I am not done playing the short tees. Not by a long shot.

Not when playing it forward can be this much fun.

— Reporter: 541-617-7868, zhall@bendbulletin.com.