River City Hackers

So, you’re not hitting the ball as far as you need to, but don’t want to make any swing adjustments or buy new equipment. What’s the easiest way to gain that extra yardage? Tee the ball up higher.

Years ago, Golf Magazine did a study on this and published an article with it’s findings (click here to read it) In summary, their findings showed that the higher you tee the ball, the more distance you can obtain. Basically, the higher the tee height, the higher the launch angle and the lower the spin equated to more distance.

The longest distance was gained by teeing the bottom of the ball above or even with the top, or crown, of the club. Low handicappers (0-9), using a high tee, gained an average of 12 yards. Mid handicappers (10-19) gained an average of 8 yards, and High handicappers (20 & up) gained an average of 17 yards! I’ve tried this with poor results, ie. I would either “wiff” the ball, or severely pop it up. As a Mid Handicapper, I’ve found it much easier to use the Mid Tee height, which is with the equator of the ball being even with the crown of the club (see photo). The Golf Magazine study showed that the Mid Handicapper using a Mid Tee height averaged an additional gain of 6 to 7 yards off the tee. While that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of distance, depending on the conditions (wind, etc), that could mean the difference between going up or down a club on your next shot.

Now combine the above information with the idea of “consistency”. Most golfers, when using regular wooden tees will “eyeball” the tee’s height when placing it in the ground. This usually results in the tee height being a little low one hole, a little high the next, etc. How many times have you heard someone say after a pop up, “I teed the ball too high!” What if you could tee the ball the exact same height everytime? That would make one more part of your game more consistent wouldn’t it, and isn’t that the holy grail of golf? Consistency! Obviously there are conditions where you don’t want the tee the same height from day to day, i.e. high winds, etc. But for the “average” golf day, you want everything to be as consistent as possible, including the height you are teeing the ball up.

Now how do you tee the ball up consistently and at the correct height for you each and everytime? There are great products out there that will let you do it such as the Optimal Tee, the Consistent Tee, and the TwistTee to name a few. You can also purchase brush tees and specialty tees from your golf store that will achieve similar results. One thing all of these have in common is the cost. They can get outrageously expensive if you go through tees like I do. Most of them cost from $1 to $2 each compared to a bag of regular wooden tees costing $.02 each (I just bought a bag of 200 tees at Walmart for $5).

So, what’s a poor (cheap) guy to do? If you’re bored and it’s raining out today, you can do what I did. Create your own! Read on to see how I did it for a total estimated cost of 3 1/2 cents each:

Materials needed:

1. A 200 count bag of tees ($5.00 at Walmart)
2. A bag of faucet washers ($1) or rubber grommets (Walmart’s plumbing section)
3. One sharpie or ink pen (free – probably laying around your house)
4. One tube of super glue (optional – $1)

Instructions:

1. Grab your driver, a tee, and a golf ball.
2. Place the ball on a tee, and hold it against the face of the driver in a way that the equator of the ball is equal to the top, or crown, of your driver. Note where the top of the tee is in relation to the club face. If need be, make a small dot on the clubface using the sharpie, or note which line on your clubface matches up to the top of the tee.
3. After determining where on the clubface the top of the tee should be, make a small mark or line at the point on the tee where it’s at the bottom of the clubface. In otherwords, the mark on the tee, if placed in the ground, should leave the top of the tee at the desired height.
4. Using this first tee you marked as a template, mark additional tees (mark a few more tees than you have washers for)
5. Push the washer onto the tee so the bottom of the washer is flush with the line you drew. Some of the washers I bought had rounded tops and some were just flat. If using the rounded ones, make sure the flat part is even with the line and the rounded part is towards the top of the tee (see the photo above)
6. My washers were a little loose, so I added a small drop of superglue to each one (just enough to keep it in place)
7. Use the extra tees you marked as “back up” in case you break a tee. Just pull the washer off the broken tee and slip it onto one of the extras.
8. That’s it! The above was for the driver, but the same concept would work for your fairway woods and hybrids. Total time to create 14 tees was about 15 minutes (only had 14 washers). Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my boring, rainy day.

Kevin
Roseville, CA