Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro

Because the driver is the main club that we generally tee up on the golf course and the tee height can be set at any level, it’s really important we do take maximum advantage, you’ve been able to tee the ball up and tee it up at exactly the right level.

Now, you see lots of difference here. You’ve got lots of different sized tee pegs and lots of different driver sizes basically. Some have bigger heads, smaller heads, deeper heads, shallow heads. So there isn’t any one set measurement that I can recommend to any particular golfer but what we can do is use the club head size as a guide for how high we can tee this up.

Then once you’ve decided how high you want to tee it up, the golfer can then make the decision of whether we go for the straight tee pegs that you just push into the ground any different height. Lots of good players like those, but some higher handicappers lesser the confidence about how high they should tee it. They don’t know whether they’re teeing it up the right height so some of those golfers are recommended by the casualties so you’ve got a little sort of flat section at the top but also a flat section towards the bottom of the tee with the spikes sticking out of the bottom. Looks like a little castle. You can push that into the ground at the right level almost like an hourglass shape.

That tee won’t go in the ground any lower than it’s meant to be, so you can work out how high you want then just go and buy that size of tee peg. Stick a few of those in your pocket and every time you come to your driver, you whack the tee peg and as far as it goes and it’s set to that level. So the first thing is, work out how high that needs to be and then go and buy a pack of tees that are at that height.

The aim really is to have half the ball above the top of the clubface. So we take the driver clubface and we find the equator of the ball mine are handily marked with the black line here. Top of the clubface, line that to put the top there and then work out high – how high the tee would need to be to get the ball to that level.

So I’ve teed it up here, black line it halfway on the equator, slide the club in, that for me is going to be at the right level. So I can sweep the club up into the back of the ball without risk of grounding the club or skying it. And they’re really the two main issues if your tee peg is too high or too low.

If the tee peg is too high in the air, the club has an opportunity to sweep underneath the ball. The ball hits very close to the top edge and the ball skies up into the air. You might notice sometimes the top of your driver is damaged. It’s got scuff marks across the top and that’s because the club is slid underneath potentially a too high a tee.

The other alternative is pegging it too low than encouraging yourself to swing down at the ball too much, sort of digging the ball out of the ground. And that may be the reason why you’re dropkicking your drives. If the ball is sort of sitting on a tee peg that’s down in the floor, you think, well, I need to gauge this out, I need hit down on this like an iron and then you end hitting the ball fat anyway. So a nice high tee peg where half the ball is above the top of the golf club positioned just on your left instep should encourage a nice upwards sweeping blow to the ball that should get good contact and less dropkick drivers.