The simple but crucial course-care task you’re probably neglecting

You’re a good golf citizen. You repair your ball marks. You fill your divots.

But for all your fine behavior, there is one course-care task you likely overlook: picking up your broken tees.

This can happen on any hole. But (spoiler alert!) it occurs most often on par-3s, where more golfers play irons and leave low-lying, shattered pegs behind.

Why is this an issue?

Mark Patterson, a longtime member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, is the super at Legacy Golf Club at Lakewood Ranch and Serenoa Golf Club, a pair of Florida courses. We asked him about the problems posed by broken tees, and what golfers can do to be part of the solution.

The aesthetics

Broken tees aren’t as ugly as, say, crushed beer cans, but they’re not pretty, either. By the end of a busy day at a popular public course, Patterson says, tee boxes on par-3s are apt to be littered with 40 to 50 broken pegs. And yes, “littered” is the right word. “The problem has gotten better in the past 10 years as more golfers have been made aware of it,” Patterson says. “But when people leave a bunch of tees behind, it can be a trashy look.”

The equipment damage

Broken tees don’t pose a serious risk to rotary mowers, which, Patterson says, cut through shattered pegs without much trouble. But reel mowers are another story, and those are the mowers most often used to cut the grass on teeing grounds. When those reel mowers pass over broken tees, Patterson says, the shards often get caught up in the bed knives, which knocks things out of whack.

“You’ll get streaking and unevenness,” Patterson says. “It messes with the quality of the cut, and then you’ve got to take it to the maintenance shed.”

Repairing the mowers can take several hours that could otherwise be spent on other tasks. In worst-case scenarios, Patterson says, the reels get so gummed up, they stop turning altogether, which can lead to a burnt-out engine, and that’s an even more expensive fix.

The best thing golfers can do

You’ve probably noticed that a lot of courses have small mesh trays on their tee boxes: receptacles for broken tees. “It’s pretty simple,” Patterson says. “Just pick up your tee and toss it in there. You’ll be doing us a big favor.” You’re also doing something nice for the next golfers through, who can use the broken tee you’ve set aside for them.

The next best thing

No receptacle. No problem. Just sweep the tee into the rough, Patterson says. “We use rotary mowers there, and broken tees don’t damage those.”

Other options

You could, of course, simply place the broken tee in your pocket and save it for re-use later in the round. Sometimes, broken tees get pushed so far into the ground that it’s close to impossible to pull them up by hand. In that case, Patterson, a bit of digging with a divot-repair tool should do the trick. Another option is to tap the tee down with your club so that it’s lying even with the ground, so low that the mower won’t cut into it.

For a video tutorial on broken tees, see Patterson’s video below.