What Golf Tees Do Pros Use?

Ever wonder if that fancy, five-pronged plastic tee you see in commercials is the secret weapon used by your favorite PGA Tour player? Here’s the straightforward answer: almost all professional golfers use the cheapest, simplest, and most traditional golf tees available - standard wooden ones. This article will explain exactly why they stick with the basics, break down what actually matters when teeing up a ball, and show you how to apply the same principles to your own game.

The Pro's Go-To Tee: Simple, Wooden, and Free

If you walked through the practice area at a PGA Tour event, you'd see buckets brimming with generic wooden tees. There's no magical technology or secret design. Tour players grab fistfuls of these tees like they’re complimentary candies at a hotel front desk - because for them, they are. But the fact that they're free is only part of the story. The real reasons pros stick with wood run much deeper and are rooted in the pursuit of absolute consistency.

Unlike amateurs who might go a whole round with a single indestructible plastic tee, pros break several tees per round. It's a non-issue for them. They value predictability and feel over durability, and a simple wooden peg provides precisely that. It’s a known quantity. They know exactly how it will feel, how it will perform, and how it will break on a well-struck shot. In a game of countless variables, they intentionally choose the simplest, most constant option for the one thing they can completely control: how the ball is perched before they swing.

Why Wood Wins: The Practical Reasons Pros Prefer It

It’s easy to dismiss their choice as simply a matter of convenience. But as a golf coach, I can tell you there are distinct performance and practical reasons that make wooden tees the overwhelmingly popular choice at the elite level.

It's All About Consistency and Feel

Professional golf is a game of millimeters and tiny adjustments. A pro’s entire setup and swing is a meticulously rehearsed routine designed to produce a predictable outcome. A simple wooden tee fits perfectly into this philosophy.

• Predictable Resistance: A standard wooden tee provides a consistent level of friction and resistance at impact. The pro knows precisely how the club will interact with the tee and the ball.
• Clean Breakaway: When a driver makes contact at over 110 mph, a wooden tee does what it's designed to do: break. This clean break means the tee imparts minimal influence on the ball's flight. It gets out of the way, allowing the clubface to be the sole messenger telling the ball where to go. A durable plastic tee, by contrast, might resist and snap back, potentially affecting sidespin or feel in a subtle, yet undesirable, way.
• No Gimmicks: Pros spend their lives learning how to control ball flight with their swing, not with their equipment. They aren’t looking for a tee that promises a few extra yards or "less spin." They prefer a neutral platform that allows their swing to do the work.

Better for the Course (And Mowers)

There's also a practical, course-management aspect to it. Most golf course superintendents and maintenance crews prefer wooden tees. Broken plastic tees can lie on the course for years without decomposing, and worse, they can severely damage the expensive blades on fairway and greens mowers. Wooden tees, being biodegradable, simply break down and return to the earth over time. Many high-end courses and professional tournaments have policies that encourage or even require the use of wooden tees for this very reason.

What About "Performance" Tees? Exploring the Alternatives

You’ve seen them everywhere online and in golf shops: bristle-top tees, martini-glass shaped tees, and flexible plastic tees, all promising straighter shots and more distance. If they work so well, why aren't all the pros using them? The answer, once again, comes down to consistency versus marginal gains.

The Claims vs. The Reality

Many alternative tees are marketed as "low friction" or "zero friction." The idea is that by reducing the surface area touching the ball, you reduce backspin and sidespin, leading to longer, straighter drives. In a controlled GUMP test with a robot swinging perfectly every time, these claims might show minuscule benefits - a few feet of roll or a slightly tighter dispersion.

However, for a human golfer, especially one at the professional level, that tiny potential gain comes with a potential downside: unpredictability. The feel can be different. The way the ball comes off might vary slightly from one swing to the next. For a player who can shape the ball on command, introducing a piece of equipment that tries to "correct" spin can be more of a hindrance than a help. They would rather have a tee that acts as a consistent baseline than one that adds another variable to the equation.

You might see a few exceptions. Long drive competitors, whose only goal is maximum ball speed and distance, often use specialized tees. Occasionally, a PGA Tour player might experiment with a specific brand for its durability or because they prefer its rigid, consistent height-setting capabilities, but they are by far the minority.

The Pro's Real Secret: It’s Not the Tee, It’s the Tee *Height*

Here’s the most important lesson you can take from this whole discussion. The pros aren't obsessed with the *type* of tee they use, but they are absolutely obsessed with their tee *height*. This is where the true advantage lies and what you should focus on in your own game.

Tee height is one of the most significant factors in optimizing your launch conditions, especially with the driver. Finding a consistent, repeatable tee height eliminates a massive variable and is fundamental to striking the ball well.

Finding Your Perfect Driver Tee Height

The goal when hitting a driver is to make contact with the ball on the upswing. This promotes a high launch and low spin - the perfect recipe for maximum distance. Tee height is directly responsible for enabling this.

1. Start with the Standard Rule: A great starting point is to place your tee in the ground so that half of the golf ball sits above the crown (top edge) of your driver head when you sole it on the ground.
2. Test and Tweak: Hit a few shots from this height. If you are skying the ball (hitting it high on the face, leaving a "dummy mark"), your tee is likely too high. If you're hitting it low on the face or catching it thin, your tee is probably too low.
3. Lock It In: Once you find a height that produces a solid, middle-to-high face contact, make it your default. You can buy tees with printed lines for reference, or simply use a Sharpie to mark a line on your wooden tees. Practice this until you can set your tee height perfectly without even thinking about it.

Pros will make subtle adjustments from this standard. For instance, they might tee it slightly higher if they want to hit a high draw, or tee it slightly lower to hit a more controlled, penetrating "stinger" shot. But these are advanced adjustments made from a consistent, trusted baseline.

Teeing Up Irons and Hybrids

For par 3s or when using a fairway wood off the tee, the philosophy is different. The goal isn’t to launch the ball high into the air on an upswing. Instead, the goal is to replicate a perfect fairway lie.

• Irons: You want to tee the ball up just enough so the bottom of the ball is level with the top of the grass. The easiest way to do this is to use a broken tee from a previous hole or just push a standard tee almost all the way into the ground. A good tee shot with an iron should still take a small divot after the ball.
• Fairway Woods/Hybrids: A good rule of thumb is to have about a third of the ball above the clubface. You still want to hit slightly down or level with the ball, not swinging up like a driver.

Final Thoughts

In summary, professional golfers predominantly use standard wooden tees. They choose them not for any magical properties, but for their simplicity, consistency, and predictable feel, allowing their highly practiced swings to do all the work. The real lesson for the amateur golfer is that your time is better spent perfecting a consistent tee height rather than searching for a "game-changing" tee.

Mastering on-course strategy, like deciding on desired shot shape from the tee and the right club for the job, can be just as demanding as perfecting your swing. That’s why we built Caddie AI. When you're standing on the tee unsure of the best way to play the hole, it delivers a smart, simple strategy in seconds. By removing the guesswork from your course management, we help you step up to every shot with the clarity and confidence to commit to your swing, which is a feeling every golfer, pro or amateur, is chasing.