Is this absurd DP World Tour tee box the latest sign of the need for a golf equipment rollback?

Remember when big-screen TVs came out? "It'll be like they're playing right in your very own home," ads liked to say.

This week, on the DP World Tour, that bizarre fantasy will once again come true for a lucky resident beside Carya Golf Club during the Turkish Airlines Open at the Regnum Carya Golf & Spa Resort in the destination district of Belek, Turkey.

Carya's par-4 16th hole will play 469 yards this week, making it a minimally imposing hole for golfers who smash 320-yard drives with regularity.

What's more, it will play a tick shorter than the posted yardage due to its elevated tee box...atop the roof of a villa that borders the golf course.

That's right: golfers competing for prestige and respectability in their chosen profession will have to walk up a set of stairs on the side of a concrete villa and hit a tee shot from a manufactured tee pad.

I can't decide if it feels like something out of Happy Gilmore or something out of the common golf nightmare where I'm on the first tee for the beginning of a round but the tee is somehow located somewhere other than a golf course, or there are obstacles in the way, preventing me from making a swing.

Carya's silly makeshift tee box is a restoration of sorts, believe it or not. When the course first opened in 2008, the hole played roughly its current length, with a typical back tee box on terra firma. But as often happens, real estate development overrode the integrity of the original design by Peter Thomson, Tim Lobb and Philip Spogard . A ring of villas built around the perimeter of the course forced the replacement of a par 3 immediately preceding the 16th with a new one shoehorned into the front nine.

Presumably Thomson, the great Aussie who won five Open Championships between 1954 and 1965 and whose knowledge of his home Royal Melbourne Golf Club was unparalleled in his day, never expected a hole on one of his courses to need to start from a perch above someone's kitchen or man-cave.

As bizarre as it is, I almost have to admire the ingenuity of fashioning a smooth, real-sod tee pad on top of someone's home. Hopefully the tromp of footfalls and thud of tee shots doesn't disturb the White Lotus re-watching activities of the residents below.

But much more drastic measures have been taken by much more significant championship golf venues to combat ever-increasing power from pro golfers in recent years. Ahead of the 2015 Open, the R&A made headlines when they announced that they would build a new back tee box for the famed Road Hole, the 17th hole at St. Andrews' Old Course, on property that was otherwise out-of-bounds, located on the far side of a stone wall that for centuries had marked a course boundary.

Then, in 2017, Augusta National Golf Club did something unprecedented when they bought land encompassing the entirety of neighboring Augusta Country Club's par-4 9th hole, in order to accommodate new infrastructure as well as a brand-new back tee on the iconic par-5 13th hole, stretching it to as much a 560 yards up from a previous length of 485 yards. For decades, even that shorter length prompted what Bobby Jones called a "momentous decision" about whether to try for the green in two shots - something most players were doing with mid- and short-irons by the 2010s. Because the club and ball have become extremely powerful in the hands of Masters contestants, it became necessary to lengthen the hole, an alteration original architect Alister MacKenzie likely never expected.

Ultimately, we can probably chalk Carya Golf Club's rooftop tee box up as a competitive golf novelty...for now. But it remains true that elite golfers - pros and amateurs alike - can hit the ball such prodigious and sometimes downright dangerous distances as to threaten the viability of the likes of Augusta National and St. Andrews, never mind a Turkish resort layout. The year 2028, when the USGA and R&A have resolved to implement new testing standards for golf balls, cannot come soon enough.

In the meantime, I wonder what tournament organizers might do to toughen up Carya's 16th hole for next year. My money's on a clown's mouth.

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