Tip Tuesday: Using Tees as Effective Training Aids

In golf, things you might think have more linear purpose can actually offer multiple benefits. The simple golf tee, for example, can help you in many ways beyond serving as a resting place for your ball on the tee box. Let Steve Dresser from the Steve Dresser Golf Academy in Pawleys Island, S.C. show you several ways they can also help you counter some common swing ailments!

When it comes to teaching golf, I always like simplicity. We can really complicate things here. And one of the simplest things we use is a tee, and obviously we use it to tee up our golf ball, but sometimes, especially in a pinch, if I don’t have some of my teaching aids with me and I’ve got a pocket full of tees, we’ll use them to help people with their swing path. For instance, over here you can see we’ve got a tee, a little to the outside of the ball, and a little to the inside. This is for those of you who get way over the top and cut across outside to end. You’d be amazed how many people actually hit all three of those objects down there, both tees, and the golf ball. This is to encourage a little more of an inside path to the ball, keep things from getting over that way.

Here we’ve got the tees set up the opposite way, might be a little close together there. It is definitely possible to swing too much in-to-out. In fact, I had a guy earlier today who tends to do a little too much of that, and catches a lot on the heel as a result of that. If people do get too stuck behind them and swinging out to the right too much, we’ll put the tees in this direction and that just, they’ll actually probably feel like they’re a little over the top, or steep coming down. They’re really not, as we all know, what we feel we’re doing, and what we’re really doing, are very rarely the same. That helps to create a gate to (not) get too much in-to-out. We do see a lot of players who take the club way back behind them. Many of us have had that word “inside” pounded into our minds.

We get it way back in here and then as a result, we feel the urge to bring it back over this way to get it back on plane, and most of the time we go too far over. This is just one tee on the target line with a pointy end that way, and then another one on, kind of, an inside track, with the pointy end toward the ball. The idea is to take it back more along the target line a little bit longer, and then maybe have a feeling of shallowing a little bit, and then bringing it along this tee right here. It ends up … The loop, we see so much is in and over. It’s a feeling of going out and under, but it’s really not so much making an opposite loop, as it is just getting rid of the initial loop.

And then lastly (I say lastly, that’s lastly today, I’ve got tons more of these) The “hosel rocket,” when we hit it off the hosel of the club, the shank. Isn’t it amazing, sometimes you just say that word to somebody and they, “Oh, no, no, don’t say that.” This is not a permanent cure, but it can at least get you smiling for a little while. What we do is just set up a tee on the inside of the ball, and tell the player to try to aim more for the tee. Of course, if they’ve been hitting on the heel all the time, that helps them find the center of the club face. Again, not a permanent cure, but it’s, kind of, a quick fix for at least what’s going on that day. So, tees can come in really handy!