Are you looking to pick up distance? Let’s consider some steps that you might take. You could improve your swing. You could upgrade your equipment. You could increase your strength and flexibility.
All reasonable approaches. But each requires an investment of time, money or a combination of the two.
Might there be an easier and cheaper way to go? Turns out there is. You could switch to… the right tee.
We don’t mean the right “tee box.” We mean the right tee. As in, those little pegs on which you prop your ball. Believe it or not, research shows that they can influence how far you hit your ball.
“Tees do matter,” said Gene Parente, the founder of Robot Laboratories and former overseer of GOLF Magazine’s annual ClubTest. “I know there are going to be eyerolls but hear me out.”
Parente once looked into the matter. In 2021, he told GOLF.com what his research had revealed: that certain golfers can gain 2 to 4 yards on their drives simply by using the proper tee.
That’s quite a claim. And it requires some context. According to Parente’s research, whether you stand to benefit from using the right tee depends on your angle of attack.
In the end, Parente said it’s all about friction. For golfers who hit up on the ball — also known as a positive angle of attack — friction is not a factor. Shots struck in that way lift off easily without creating any friction between the ball and the tee. But for golfers who hit down on the ball with their drivers (the majority of amateurs do this), it’s a different story. The ball makes contact with the front edge of the cupped tee as it launches. That contact produces spin, which can diminish distance.
A lot of distance? No. But if you accept that golf is a game of inches, every little bit matters.
The question then becomes: what’s the right tee?
As a brand-agnostic tester, Parente was not in a position to name names. But he suggested trying tees with “prongs” at the top, as opposed to tees with shallow bowls on which you rest the ball. Minimizing contact between the tee and ball also minimizes friction.
Of course, even in the best-case scenario, you’re not going to see dramatic distance gains by changing how you peg your ball: 2 to 4 yards isn’t nothing but it’s not a lot either. What’s more, there are other considerations when it comes to buying tees, including price, aesthetics (some tees are just better-looking than others) and environmental impact (some tees biodegrade faster than others).
Switching tees, in short, might not be worth it to you.
There are, after all, many other ways to tack on distance — significant gains beyond a relatively modest 2 to 4 yards. You’ll just have to spend some money or expend more time.
