Are you teeing the ball up at the correct height? Here’s how to find out

tee height

Tee height can vastly affect performance with the driver.

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There are many factors that affect ball flight and your ability to achieve optimal launch with your driver. You wouldn’t guess it, but one of the most important is how high you tee the ball.

As a rule of thumb, the higher you peg it, the more shallow your swing becomes, since you’re forcing yourself to hit up more on the ball. Tee it low and the opposite happens: Your angle of attack gets steeper, because you’ll instinctively swing down more on the ball in order to make contact.

tee height
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So what’s the right height? From a poll of GOLF’s Top 100 Teachers, the ideal tee height is about 1.5 inches for driver. A good checkpoint is that half the ball “peeks” above the crown after you sole the club at address. For a 3-wood, peg it about half an inch and just a quarter inch with an iron.

Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.