Beginner Golf Tip - Correct Height for Hitting the Driver (Video) - by Pete Styles
Beginner Golf Tip - Correct Height for Hitting the Driver (Video) - by Pete Styles

While you're out in the golf course playing, there's one opportunity where you get to choose the lie of the golf ball and that’s during your tee shots. So we need to make sure that when you're given the opportunity to pick the line that you have the ball on, you actually choose the best possible tee peg height to get the most consistent results. So it's not just about teeing the ball up at the right level, it's about doing it consistently over the course of an entire round to make sure that it's always the right height for the club that you’ve chosen.

So if we start off by looking at using a driver, the driver is one of the deepest faces in the bag. So we actually need quite a deep tee peg but there is a risk with having the ball too high up on the tee peg that you could go straight underneath the ball and have one of those awkward sky shots that goes too high but likewise having the ball too low on the club face, makes it very difficult to strike the ball correctly. The club face of your driver actually has a small curve or a cumber to it. So it's actually more lofted towards the top of the club and less lofted towards the bottom. That’s designed to help correct a few of your shots. But if you want to see good consistent high flights, with the right level of spin on the golf ball, teeing the ball up correctly is really important.

Just to start with I'm going to show you here how I would like to see the ball teed up. Taking my red line as the equator of the golf ball at halfway, I'd like to have the equator lined up with the top edge of the golf club. So effectively half of the ball crests over the top and half of the ball sits down into the face. That way when I strike the golf ball, I don’t actually need to hit the ground, I can sweep slightly on the way up and have the ball hitting right in the center of the golf club. If the ball sitting all of the ball above the face, there is arrested if I got underneath it, I'd hit of the top edge maybe leave a nasty sky mark on your golf club. You might look at your clubs and think if there's a lot of marking across the top edge, that’s what you’ve been doing, you’ve been skying it and knocking it too high up into the air because the tee peg was too high.

While if the tee peg is too low, you might struggle to get underneath the ball or encourage yourself to hit down and take a divot and that’s not going to work for you either so with your driver, you don’t want to be taking a divot. So as I look at the three tee pegs I've got setup here, I've got a short one to start with ands that’s a little bit too low. That driver would sit slightly below the top edge, it wouldn’t meet the half of the ball above the top like I would want. That tee peg sits a lot nicer half the ball over the top that would work. And this one is a little bit too high I could get all the way underneath that one, and sky that one up into the air.

So that would be the correct height I'd want for my driver. As you go down to your 3-wood and your hybrid comes in your arms, the same principle applies with the wooden headed clubs. So the 3-wood and the hybrid club are the same at half the ball above the top. As you move down into your irons, probably drop the tee peg height down a little bit. An iron is designed to be hit from lower down on the club face. So when you're playing the part 3s or you're hitting an iron off the tee for safety, to get down quite low, almost just above the surface of the grass it would like a good lie.

But when you give it an opportunity with the wooden clubs get the ball a little bit higher up on the tee peg. You can need these, the straight tees that just push in to the floor and learn to push them in the size -- the right height or the right size or actually get the castle tees. They have a little flange at the bottom, where it just stops the clubs or stops the tee peg sorry, going in any lower than it should. And you use different colored castle tees to use the right height for the right club.

So I know that with my driver I would use a white colored castle tee and that would give me a nice high tee. If I wanted to hit a 3-wood, I might go down and use a yellow castle tee that’s a little bit shorter so it goes in lower and then maybe a blue castle tee for my irons shorter still. And now I just look in my pocket, pick out the right tee, gum it into the floor and I know I'm going to be consistently at t the right level, I don't need to guess too much. So when you’ve got an opportunity to tee the ball up make sure you're teeing it up consistently for consistent result out here with the ball flight.

A valuable part of making sure that you’ve got the right set-up when you’re using a driver is to use the correct height of tee. You got a tee-peg in your pocket you can push it into the ground at any height. Now it’s important that we get the right height , but also the right consistent height so sometimes we can use what we class as little casualties that have a little flange on the bottom and they will only go into the ground after set level sometimes that is quite useful to make sure you get consistent levels. The important thing we get now is the right size, the right height, if you’re on the driving range and practicing, it’s worthwhile finding the right size to input in under the mark to the start if you practice session rather than hunting round for one or worse than that, doing with the, practicing with the wrong size, the wrong height ‘cause you’ll land without your swing in the wrong fraction. The path height we want to see when we are setting you up to the golf ball is to have about half of the ball above the top of the golf club. So we have it around about here.

If it’s too much of the golf ball above the top of the club we would sky that, we would go underneath it, it could leave a nasty mark on top of your club and you’d see the ball that flies very high but not very far. Likewise a ball that’s teed up too low on the club phase isn’t really going to be impacted on the switch ball, it’s going to hit very low on the club phase resulting in low shots often lack distance. So that, set three tees up here while it’s similar on a different height so, the first one I think is the right height for me, I will be using this one, and then too high and really too high. You see a lot of goal is on the core of trying and play off the highest tee but if they cannot really swipe up on the ball and scoop it up see that, that doesn’t really work for me, I’d rather you play with a tip exit sitting half the ball just above of the top of the club. So when you swap one of this underneath your mat on the driving range make sure it sits up the right level. If you change them to an iron club or a hybrid club or even a three wood, you might have to go ahead and change the height of the tee again. When you’re on the golf course tee it up, slide the club in behind the ball, just make sure it sits at the right level get used to swing half the ball above the top of the club and then you know you got the driver teed up at the right height.

 2013-07-01

While you're out in the golf course playing, there's one opportunity where you get to choose the lie of the golf ball and that’s during your tee shots. So we need to make sure that when you're given the opportunity to pick the line that you have the ball on, you actually choose the best possible tee peg height to get the most consistent results. So it's not just about teeing the ball up at the right level, it's about doing it consistently over the course of an entire round to make sure that it's always the right height for the club that you’ve chosen.

So if we start off by looking at using a driver, the driver is one of the deepest faces in the bag. So we actually need quite a deep tee peg but there is a risk with having the ball too high up on the tee peg that you could go straight underneath the ball and have one of those awkward sky shots that goes too high but likewise having the ball too low on the club face, makes it very difficult to strike the ball correctly. The club face of your driver actually has a small curve or a cumber to it. So it's actually more lofted towards the top of the club and less lofted towards the bottom. That’s designed to help correct a few of your shots. But if you want to see good consistent high flights, with the right level of spin on the golf ball, teeing the ball up correctly is really important.

Just to start with I'm going to show you here how I would like to see the ball teed up. Taking my red line as the equator of the golf ball at halfway, I'd like to have the equator lined up with the top edge of the golf club. So effectively half of the ball crests over the top and half of the ball sits down into the face. That way when I strike the golf ball, I don’t actually need to hit the ground, I can sweep slightly on the way up and have the ball hitting right in the center of the golf club. If the ball sitting all of the ball above the face, there is arrested if I got underneath it, I'd hit of the top edge maybe leave a nasty sky mark on your golf club. You might look at your clubs and think if there's a lot of marking across the top edge, that’s what you’ve been doing, you’ve been skying it and knocking it too high up into the air because the tee peg was too high.

While if the tee peg is too low, you might struggle to get underneath the ball or encourage yourself to hit down and take a divot and that’s not going to work for you either so with your driver, you don’t want to be taking a divot. So as I look at the three tee pegs I've got setup here, I've got a short one to start with ands that’s a little bit too low. That driver would sit slightly below the top edge, it wouldn’t meet the half of the ball above the top like I would want. That tee peg sits a lot nicer half the ball over the top that would work. And this one is a little bit too high I could get all the way underneath that one, and sky that one up into the air.

So that would be the correct height I'd want for my driver. As you go down to your 3-wood and your hybrid comes in your arms, the same principle applies with the wooden headed clubs. So the 3-wood and the hybrid club are the same at half the ball above the top. As you move down into your irons, probably drop the tee peg height down a little bit. An iron is designed to be hit from lower down on the club face. So when you're playing the part 3s or you're hitting an iron off the tee for safety, to get down quite low, almost just above the surface of the grass it would like a good lie.

But when you give it an opportunity with the wooden clubs get the ball a little bit higher up on the tee peg. You can need these, the straight tees that just push in to the floor and learn to push them in the size — the right height or the right size or actually get the castle tees. They have a little flange at the bottom, where it just stops the clubs or stops the tee peg sorry, going in any lower than it should. And you use different colored castle tees to use the right height for the right club.

So I know that with my driver I would use a white colored castle tee and that would give me a nice high tee. If I wanted to hit a 3-wood, I might go down and use a yellow castle tee that’s a little bit shorter so it goes in lower and then maybe a blue castle tee for my irons shorter still. And now I just look in my pocket, pick out the right tee, gum it into the floor and I know I'm going to be consistently at t the right level, I don't need to guess too much. So when you’ve got an opportunity to tee the ball up make sure you're teeing it up consistently for consistent result out here with the ball flight.

A valuable part of making sure that you’ve got the right set-up when you’re using a driver is to use the correct height of tee. You got a tee-peg in your pocket you can push it into the ground at any height. Now it’s important that we get the right height , but also the right consistent height so sometimes we can use what we class as little casualties that have a little flange on the bottom and they will only go into the ground after set level sometimes that is quite useful to make sure you get consistent levels. The important thing we get now is the right size, the right height, if you’re on the driving range and practicing, it’s worthwhile finding the right size to input in under the mark to the start if you practice session rather than hunting round for one or worse than that, doing with the, practicing with the wrong size, the wrong height ‘cause you’ll land without your swing in the wrong fraction. The path height we want to see when we are setting you up to the golf ball is to have about half of the ball above the top of the golf club. So we have it around about here.

If it’s too much of the golf ball above the top of the club we would sky that, we would go underneath it, it could leave a nasty mark on top of your club and you’d see the ball that flies very high but not very far. Likewise a ball that’s teed up too low on the club phase isn’t really going to be impacted on the switch ball, it’s going to hit very low on the club phase resulting in low shots often lack distance. So that, set three tees up here while it’s similar on a different height so, the first one I think is the right height for me, I will be using this one, and then too high and really too high. You see a lot of goal is on the core of trying and play off the highest tee but if they cannot really swipe up on the ball and scoop it up see that, that doesn’t really work for me, I’d rather you play with a tip exit sitting half the ball just above of the top of the club. So when you swap one of this underneath your mat on the driving range make sure it sits up the right level. If you change them to an iron club or a hybrid club or even a three wood, you might have to go ahead and change the height of the tee again. When you’re on the golf course tee it up, slide the club in behind the ball, just make sure it sits at the right level get used to swing half the ball above the top of the club and then you know you got the driver teed up at the right height.