How High Should You Tee A Golf Ball?

Thanks for reading another SwingEasy article where we do our best to write simple to follow golf tips for the everyday golfer!

This article covers everything you need to know about selecting the right golf driver tee height (or fairway woods).

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This is a question we get a lot and we understand how hard it can be for beginners to try and answer it. Choosing a tee height for your ball comes down to a few equipment and environmental decisions, let’s look at each. When you’re on a golf course, you want to be aware of both before teeing up your ball!

Equipment

One reason you might have a different tee height from your playing partners is because of the height of your driver’s club face. The face is easily measured with a ruler and will often also help you pick the right tee size (Golf Tee Buying Guide coming soon!).

Some of your clubs have a deeper face than others, here is the TaylorMade Stealth HD Driver’s face height:

Drivers will always have more face height than any other club and more importantly, the sweet spot is not near the bottom but instead in the middle of the club. This is why a tee height is so important, you want to hit the sweet spot whenever possible.

For those interested how the TaylorMade Stealth performed with our robot, see our Best Drivers for Beginner Golfers Guide.

Environment

Here is a picture of Tiger Wood’s using different setups from the 2022 Masters. By choosing different tee heights, Tiger is able to give his ball different flight paths. The lower he tee’s it up, the lower the ball will fly and vice versa. It can be hard as a beginner to introduce more variables to an already complicated game. Try it at the range before you play a round!

(Image credit golf.com)

Takeaways

The most common recommendation is to tee the ball so half of the ball goes over the face of the driver. Here the folks at Golf Distillery have made a great visual.

(Image credit Golf Distillery)

If you want your average ball flight, tee it with half of the ball over the top of the club.

If you want higher ball flight (also called trajectory) then tee it up with ¾ of the ball over the face of the driver (or fairway wood).

Last, if you’re trying to keep the ball low because you’re hitting into the wind, tee it low where the ball lines up directly with the sweet spot of the club.