Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
Hitting solid drives off the tee starts before you even draw back the club. If you want to become a consistent driver of the golf ball, it’s essential that you nail your setup.
A proper setup boils down to consistency. How consistent can you be in your aim, alignment and posture? If you can nail that, you’ll set yourself up to make great swings.
One element of a solid setup that is often overlooked is tee height. While it’s true that you should vary your tee height depending on the shot you’re trying to hit, it’s important that you have a consistent tee height for your stock driver swing.
For help with determining how high that should be, we got some insight from GOLF Top 100 Teacher Debbie Doniger.
How high should you tee up your ball with a driver?
When you get to the tee box, it can be tempting to mindlessly tee up your ball and get ready to whack it. However, if you want consistency with the big stick, you’ve got to have a consistent tee height.
So, how does one determine the optimal tee height for a stock driver swing? According to Doniger, there are two main ways to find out.
1. Use a launch monitor
The first way you can determine your optimal tee height is by leaning on technology. When you hit balls with a launch monitor, all the guesswork is taken out of things. The numbers don’t lie.
“If you have access to a launch monitor, it would be really cool to just test a low, medium and high tee [height],” Doniger says.
When you conduct this experiment, you should take a look at a few key numbers, including launch angle, spin rate and smash factor. The most important thing to look at, however, is which tee height allows you to find the center of the face most frequently.
“Hitting the center of the driver [face] is one of the most important things for hitting good tee shots,” Doniger says. “So if you have access to a launch monitor, that’s your answer right there.”
Launch monitors can be an expensive investment for an average golfer to make, so doing this experiment might not be feasible for some golfers. If you can’t get access to one, though, there’s another way you can figure out your optimal tee height.
2. Look at the geometry of your swing
Sometimes determining the correct tee height can be as simple as looking at how you swing the club. Are you someone who swings up on the ball? Or are you someone who gets a little steep coming into impact?
“If you have a shallow angle of attack, you might benefit from a higher tee ball,” Doniger says. “If you have a steeper angle of attack, teeing it high is not going to help you, so you should tee it lower.”
While it might be prudent to tee the ball higher to hit the ball a little longer, that high tee height will do you no good if you don’t have a shallow angle of attack. Conversely, if you’re someone who can swing up on the ball, leaving the ball pegged low won’t do you much good.
At the end of the day, the most important thing when it comes to teeing the ball up is finding a height that allows you to hit the center of the face consistently. So, try these two methods and see which tee height helps you create the most consistent center contact. Once you do, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a better player off the tee.
