Do You Know How High To Tee Your Driver?

By Keely Levins

How do you tee up your ball when you’re hitting driver? Do you have one of those tees that has lines on it that lets you know how high the tee should be? Do you measure with your pinky? Or do you more go by feel? There are a lot of theories out there about how high you should tee your driver, but there actually isn’t one definitive answer. A lot of this has to do with the face angle of your driver.

Say you have a driver set at 10 degrees. That means it’s 10 degrees in the sweet spot. But half an inch up, it becomes 12.6 degrees; half an inch lower, it’s 7.4 degrees. Those are three different types of shots you can hit with one club, all depending on how high you tee it. According to swing coach Sean Foley, “The right height varies depending on the shot you’re trying to hit and the playing conditions.”

“When you tee the ball higher, you have a better chance of swinging up on it and hitting the top part of the clubface, which launches the ball higher and with less distance-robbing spin,” says Foley. “Less spin means you have a better chance of getting some roll.”

When it’s calm or when the fairways are soft, Foley says he likes to tee it higher. “Conversely, in some windy conditions teeing the ball lower might make sense to help keep it below the treeline,” says Foley. “The lower flight can help reduce the effects of the wind, and you’ll get more control on the ground because more backspin means less roll.”https://103246fc895d9fbaa701713c6f3998e2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

While you can get some control over your ball flight by slightly altering how high you tee it, make sure you’re never teeing it too high or too low.

“The highest it should ever be is with half of the ball above the top of the driver,” says Foley. “The lowest is with the top of the ball slightly higher than the top of the club.”