Why You Need This: How high should you tee the golf ball?

I'm often asked this question and there's a short answer to this...

Ideally, you want to tee the ball to be even with the top of the driver face.

But does it really matter much how you tee up the ball?

Does it affect your distance?

Yes!

If you tee it up correctly, you can add 15 yards to your drives.

Let me explain...

To get more distance on your drives, you want to make contact with a high launch angle with less spin.

The loft on your driver face is lower on the bottom of the face.

So when you make contact low on the face, the launch will be lower (less distance).

You'll also get more spin with when you hit it low on the clubface, due to the gear effect.

Making contact higher up the clubface will help you hit with a higher launch angle (good) and lower spin (also good).

Simply changing the tee height can add tons of distance to your drives.

Watch this video now to discover exactly how high you should tee up your ball!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 2:50

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, welcome back to Top Speed Golf, I’m Clay Ballard. Today we’re going to answer a question that I get a lot, which is how high should I tee up my driver?

There’s a couple reasons, but the short answer to this is we want to tee up the middle of the golf ball, level with the top, very top of the face on your driver. There’s a couple reasons for this that I’m going to explain here in a second.

Stick around to the end of this video, I’ve got a great bonus for you guys that are joining us on YouTube that’s going to allow you to pick up some really good distance.

Whenever I’m teeing my ball up, obviously when I swing my driver, I’m not going to be hitting the ground. I want to have the club swing in the air, slightly over top of the grass, I don’t want to actually be taking a divot or hitting any grass at all.

When I make contact with the ball, if I want to get the most distance, I don’t actually want to hit the ball in the dead center of the face, I want to hit it a little bit higher than this.

The sweet spot that’s marked on most golf clubs is right in the center of the driver face, and that would be a very solid strike.

But if we want to get the most distance, and we want to hit it like the pros do, we’re going to actually want to hit it about a quarter inch or so above the sweet spot.

What this does is allows you to get more distance because there’s a little bit more loft on the top of the face, but it has what’s called a gear effect. Meaning, that when you hit a little bit higher above the center of gravity, the face rolls back a little bit at contact.

Just a small amount, and because the face is rolling back when in it’s in contact with the ball, the ball actually gets a little bit less backspin on it.

You’re going to get a higher launch, lower backspin which is going to result in a lot longer carry and longer distance.

So you want to make sure that you have the ball teed up high enough, and that’s why we want to tee it up a little higher than the crown, that way we can miss the ground and still hit slightly above the center of the face.

If we have the tee, the ball teed up really low, let’s say it’s only at the center of the face when you’re teeing the ball up.

Well now if I want to hit it above that center of gravity, then I have to come down, I actually have to hit the ground with my driver to be able to do that, which obviously isn’t going to happen.

It’s going to result in a center hit or even a little bit lower than center hit, which is going to cost you some yards.

Also, if you tee the ball up a little bit higher, let’s say the entire ball is above the face, oftentimes when I see people doing this, what’s happening is they’re falling back and flipping up on the ball a little bit, and that’s why the have it teed up a little bit higher.

It’s going to promote you falling back more that you can make a good, solid strike on that. So I recommend half a ball, or the center of the ball right at the top of the face, that’s going to get you some nice, long, consistent drives.

I’ll go ahead and hit one here, and show you how it works. There we go, so that was nice and high off the face. It really launched high, it had low spin, and that’s going to get a lot of carry.

Good luck to you guys, and good luck with your distance.