Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
The key to playing great golf is becoming more consistent. Once you can do that, your scores will drop in a hurry.
As we all know, though, that’s easier said than done. Even the pros struggle with consistency from time to time, so expecting steady consistency every time out from yourself is foolish. But that doesn’t mean you should abandon your own quest for consistency. Even if you can be consistent from time to time, that’s a heck of a lot better than the alternative.
Making consistent swings can be a challenge, but one thing that is easy to nail consistently is your pre-shot fundamentals — namely your grip, posture, aim and alignment. These things are easy to control — and if you can nail them, it becomes much simpler to play solid golf.
Another one of these pre-shot fundamentals you can easily control is tee height with your driver. And in today’s edition of Play Smart, five-time Ladies European Tour winner Emily Kristine Pedersen shows us how she gets a consistent tee height while on the course.
How to get perfect tee height
Tee height might seem like a trivial part of the game, but how high you tee the ball can have a huge impact on how you hit your driver. If it’s too high or too low, you will hit the ball in different spots on the clubface — and that could be costing you yards off the tee.
That’s why it’s so important to find a consistent tee height for your stock driver swing. When you take the club back, you should be able to make your stock driver swing and find the center of the clubface.
Pedersen knows this fact well, so she’s always used a clever trick that ensures she gets a consistent tee height. When she goes to tee it up with her driver, she places the ball on the ground right next to the tee as she pushes it in the ground and tries to line up the top of the tee with the top of the ball.
“It’s something I [learned] when I was taught to play golf,” she says. “I never knew how to tee it up, and now it’s just, I don’t even notice that I’m doing it.”
By using the ball as a guide for her tee height, Pedersen is ensuring that every time she pegs the ball in the ground, she’s getting the same tee height. In doing so, she’s eliminating a variable, which makes it easier to play consistent golf.
“It’s just an easy way to make sure that I’m teeing it up at the same height every time,” she says.
If you’re looking for a way to create consistent tee height with your driver, take a page out of Pedersen’s book. It’ll ensure that you get the perfect tee height every time and help you hit more consistent drives.
