The fix for Tee height wrong for the delivery

Fixing a tee height that does not suit your swing

What is actually happening

Teed too high for the way the club is being delivered, contact creeps toward the crown. Teed too low, it drops to the bottom grooves. Either way the strike leaves the middle of the face, and with a driver that is worth more distance than most swing changes.

Your strike
Sweet spot

Tee it so contact lands here

The fix

The swing can be sound and still meet the ball in the wrong place, because the ball is sitting at the wrong height for the way the club arrives. Teed too high for your delivery, the ball sits above the middle of the face as the club passes, and contact creeps toward the top edge and the crown. Teed too low, contact drops to the bottom grooves. Either way the strike leaves the centre of the face in one direction, up or down, and it does so shot after shot.

Strike location decides how much of the swing's speed reaches the ball, and any strike away from the centre gives some of it away. With a driver or a wood, the height of the strike also changes launch and spin through vertical gear effect. A strike above centre launches higher with less spin, which off a tee is tolerable until it reaches the top edge, where the ball pops up high and weak and leaves a mark on the crown. A strike below centre launches lower with more spin, the least efficient pairing there is for distance: the ball climbs late, stalls and drops short. An iron teed well above the grass on a short hole is caught high on the face, and the shot flies higher and shorter than the club should.

The face tells you directly. Spray it with foot powder or scribble on it with a dry-erase marker, then hit five tee shots at your usual height. Marks stacked above the middle, or scuffs on the crown, mean the tee is too high for the swing you make. Marks along the bottom grooves, with a flight that starts low and climbs late, mean it is too low. This fault has a narrow signature: it appears only when the ball is on a tee, and only in the up and down direction. Strike marks that also wander toward heel and toe, or misses that change shape on every lie, often point at a setup rebuilt differently each time. Misses confined to uneven ground belong to the slope.

The deciding test is whether the strike follows the tee. Mark the face again and hit five balls teed half a ball lower than usual, then five half a ball higher. If the marks move with the tee, height was the problem and you now know the right one. If the marks stay high at every height and the ball keeps popping up, the club is travelling steeply down into the ball, and lowering the tee only hides that. That is a delivery fault with its own fix.

The change happens on the tee, before you swing, and it is a measurement rather than a feel. A reasonable starting point with a driver is about half the ball showing above the top edge of the face when the club is soled behind it. Fairway woods and hybrids want the ball sitting barely above the grass, and an iron on a short hole wants it no higher than a good lie would give you. The right height is whichever one centres the marks for the swing you make now. Once you have it, push every tee in to the same depth, using a line drawn on the tee as the gauge, so the height stops being a fresh decision on each hole.

The instinctive responses change the swing to suit the tee, when the tee should be changed to suit the swing. A golfer who skies one tees the next lower but keeps the same descending blow, so the strike drops, the spin climbs, and the ball still comes up short, only lower. A golfer who catches it low on the face tries to lift the ball into the air, which moves the bottom of the arc back and turns a low strike into a top. Change the tee in small steps, judge each height on five marks rather than one shot, and leave the swing alone while you do it.

Drills

Work through them in order. Each one says what it needs before you start.

Three-height ladder
Spray or mark the face of your driver. Hit five balls at your usual tee height, read the marks, then wipe and re-mark the face. Hit five teed half a ball lower, wipe and re-mark, then five half a ball higher. Note where each group of marks sits. Success is finding the height whose group sits in the middle of the face with no marks on the crown. If no height centres the strike, stop here: the delivery needs attention before the tee does. Once one height works, use it for every tee shot on your next round.
Needs Foot powder spray or a dry-erase marker and a towel to wipe the face
Marked tees
Take the height the ladder gave you and push a tee in to it. Draw a line on the tee where it meets the ground, then mark nine more tees at the same point. Hit ten drives, pushing each tee exactly to its line and checking the face after every shot. Success is ten marks in one tight cluster in the middle of the face and no pop-ups. Carry only marked tees on the course from then on, and redraw the line if a swing change moves your marks.
Needs Wooden tees, a permanent marker and foot powder spray or a dry-erase marker
Short-hole iron tee
With a mid-iron, tee the ball so it sits just above the grass, as if on a good fairway lie. Mark the face and hit ten shots, checking after each. Marks on the upper grooves with a high, short flight mean the tee is too high, so push it lower and hit ten more. Success is marks centred on the face, a shallow scrape or no mark on the turf after the ball, and a normal flight for that club. Use that height on every short hole where you hit an iron from the tee.
Needs Tees and foot powder spray or a dry-erase marker

Browse every drill on the site

Practice plan and log

Practise this fix, day by day

Keep a dated log of every session against this fix, so in a few weeks you can read back whether the change has taken instead of trying to remember.

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Or turn this fix into a practice plan

With a free account, the drills above become a 14-day plan: the setup checks and the first drill for three days, then the next drill, a rest day every fourth day, and a re-test on the last day that sends you back through the questions. Each day is a short list to tick off at the range, with reminders by email or in your calendar if you want them.

How the 14 days run

Day 1Ten balls as a baseline, then the setup checks and the first drill
Days 2 to 3The first drill again, one checkpoint and one feel a day
Day 4Rest, as are days 8 and 12
Days 5 to 11The next drills in turn, each warmed up by the one before
Day 13Every drill once, then every checkpoint
Day 14Re-test: the baseline again and the questions for your symptom

Checkpoints

What to look for to know whether the change has taken.

Strike marks on a sprayed or marked face sit in the middle, not stacked toward the top edge or along the bottom grooves.
The crown and top edge of the driver carry no scuffs or ball marks.
With the driver soled behind the ball at address, the same amount of ball shows above the top edge of the face on every tee shot.
Tee shots neither pop up high and short nor start low and climb late; the flight rises steadily to a normal peak.
Every tee goes into the ground to the same depth, set against a mark rather than by eye.

Feels

A feel is not a description of what the club does. It is whatever gets your body to do it, and a correct change usually feels exaggerated long before it looks correct.

The ball is already waiting at the height your swing arrives at, so there is no urge to reach up for it or dig down after it.
At address the ball looks the same against the top of the face every time, like a picture you have seen before.
Contact feels like one quiet, solid strike from the middle of the face rather than a click off the top edge or a dead thud from low down.

Symptoms that lead here

Each of these can resolve to this cause. If the page above does not match what you are seeing, start from the symptom instead and let the questions narrow it.

If this is not it: causes that produce the same shots

What this rests on

Search for the Perfect Swing: The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your GameAlastair Cochran and John Stobbs, for the Golf Society of Great Britain, 2005 reissue, originally 1968
The physics of golf: The convex face of a driverA. Raymond Penner, 2001
What is Smash Factor in Golf?TrackMan, accessed 2026
40+ TrackMan Parameters ExplainedTrackMan, accessed 2026

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