Driver tee height

[Liko81]

14 hours ago, natureboy said:

Not sure I follow this bit either...apex of what?

I should have said "bottom of swing". If I had good pictures or diagrams of what I'm talking about I'd post them, but bear with me. In a "straight" swing path (sometimes called "in-to-in") and no torso shift front or back, the club would bottom out right in the center of your stance where you grounded it when you addressed the ball, and then curve inside a touch as the clubhead rises back up (so with no weight transfer and the ball teed forward this would pull-fade the shot to varying degrees). With proper weight transfer shifting your torso forward so your lead shoulder is at or just behind your front foot right at impact, everything lines back up again (hopefully), except you're still hitting the ball at or just past the bottom of your swing so there's limited up-angle to the clubhead's travel. This approach lowers launch and increases spin.

With an "inside approach", aka an "inside-out" overall swing path, the club now bottoms out to the right of the center of your stance; you've essentially "rotated" the entire plane of swing toward your right (for a right-handed golfer). Now, the club has longer to travel from the bottom of the swing to get to a ball teed at the same position in your stance, so it can rise more and be travelling more upward at impact. The fact that the club will also be facing outward at the bottom of the swing is compensated for by the curve of the swing path over the ground and the rotation of the club as your hands "turn over" into your follow-through, so at impact, both the direction the clubhead is moving and the direction it's facing will be lined up with the desired flight path, but the clubhead will be moving more upward, increasing launch angle and decreasing spin, which for most golfers will produce a more ideal driver flight (and thus better distance).

In a situation where the flight path was straight and on-line but the launch was too high and the spin too low, my diagnosis was a ball teed too far forward, so it's being hit upward too much. If that can't be corrected by bringing the ball back enough without causing other things to come way out of alignment, what I was imagining was a golfer with an "inside to inside" swing, who's been told to tee too far forward and hit "out" at it. They've incorrectly learned to compensate for the resulting pull-slice with extreme, early weight transfer to force the swing path more to the outside and square it up again, so they feel like they're hitting "out" like they've been told. For a golfer like this, replacing "swing out at it" with "swing on an inside to out path" will help them properly turn their swing path outward away from them, which would allow them to bring the ball back inside their lead foot, use less weight transfer, bring the launch down and the spin up.

However, it could be the exact opposite case; the golfer could have a natural in-to-out swing path that's enough to push the ball when teed on the instep, so they've teed further out to line it up and now they're swinging too far up on it. For a golfer like this, my advice to bring the swing plane even further around to their trailing side is bad advice; what they need to do is "bring everything more to center"; bring the ball back in their stance, but then bring their swing plane around toward the front, moving the bottom of the swing forward in their stance so they're hitting up on it less.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Liko81

[natureboy]

50 minutes ago, Liko81 said:

I should have said "bottom of swing".

However, it could be the exact opposite case; the golfer could have a natural in-to-out swing path that's enough to push the ball when teed on the instep, so they've teed further out to line it up and now they're swinging too far up on it. For a golfer like this, my advice to bring the swing plane even further around to their trailing side is bad advice; what they need to do is "bring everything more to center"; bring the ball back in their stance, but then bring their swing plane around toward the front, moving the bottom of the swing forward in their stance so they're hitting up on it less.

I suspected that's what you meant. 'Nadir' would have been more clear than 'apex'.

The scenarios you mention also depend on the relative amount of wrist release. Someone whose hands lead the shaft will tend to present less loft while also increasing their AoA vs. someone who 'released' the club more coming down. That would change the impact conditions, right?

[DaveP043]

Jeepers, guys, you're making my head hurt!    Isn't it easier to just buy a set of longer tees and see if things improve?  

[Liko81]

38 minutes ago, natureboy said:

I suspected that's what you meant. 'Nadir' would have been more clear than 'apex'.

The scenarios you mention also depend on the relative amount of wrist release. Someone whose hands lead the shaft will tend to present less loft while also increasing their AoA vs. someone who 'released' the club more coming down. That would change the impact conditions, right?

Nadir is technically correct but fairly arcane; I've never heard anyone refer to the lowest point of the golf swing as the nadir. I used the term "apex' because in racing it refers to the inside point of the racing line in a turn at which you're closest to the curb.

The orientation of hands to clubhead at impact does make a difference. However, the naive solution to being told you're leading the club with the hands is to release your wrists earlier, and done even a little too early this results in "casting" the club which wastes most of the power of the downswing. So, you have to be real careful telling someone who's keeping his wrists too stiff to "release more".

[CarlSpackler]

I usually like to tee my ball 2" below waist high.

[Hacker James]

I am with @DaveP043  Just buy the damned tees. or as  Bernie says.."enough of the damned emails".  OTOH, nothing wrong with a bit of lively discussion supported by factual information.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Hacker James

[sirhacksalot]

I have found my best results recently with low loft 8,9' and a high tee height, 4" tees barely in the ground if using the 8 with the ball above crown.  Ball on crown with the 9' probably could barely do this with the 3-1/4".  Probably stands to reason that this would continue to go down with loft as mentioned before trying to reach optimum launch etc.  But for me this has lead to the best results.  

[iacas]

8 hours ago, Liko81 said:

I should have said "bottom of swing". If I had good pictures or diagrams of what I'm talking about I'd post them, but bear with me. In a "straight" swing path (sometimes called "in-to-in") and no torso shift front or back, the club would bottom out right in the center of your stance where you grounded it when you addressed the ball, and then curve inside a touch as the clubhead rises back up (so with no weight transfer and the ball teed forward this would pull-fade the shot to varying degrees).

I disagree. It can bottom out farther forward if sequencing is "good." It can bottom out farther back if you flip at all (as most do).

8 hours ago, Liko81 said:

With proper weight transfer shifting your torso forward so your lead shoulder is at or just behind your front foot right at impact, everything lines back up again (hopefully), except you're still hitting the ball at or just past the bottom of your swing so there's limited up-angle to the clubhead's travel. This approach lowers launch and increases spin.

Your shoulders don't move forward much in a good golf swing. What we call the "URC" or Upper Rotational Center stays pretty stable.

[natureboy]

22 hours ago, Liko81 said:

Nadir is technically correct but fairly arcane; I've never heard anyone refer to the lowest point of the golf swing as the nadir. I used the term "apex' because in racing it refers to the inside point of the racing line in a turn at which you're closest to the curb.

The orientation of hands to clubhead at impact does make a difference. However, the naive solution to being told you're leading the club with the hands is to release your wrists earlier, and done even a little too early this results in "casting" the club which wastes most of the power of the downswing. So, you have to be real careful telling someone who's keeping his wrists too stiff to "release more".

Low point is more commonly used and would be more clear. Apex is the highest point of a ball flight trajectory so for the swing using the same 'relative to the ground surface' frame of reference, apex of the swing arc is easily interpreted as the top of the swing.

You could say 'hold it off' less or 'don't resist' release through the ball I wasn't talking about releasing from the top.

[gregsandiego]

On 8/26/2016 at 11:52 AM, DaveP043 said:

Jeepers, guys, you're making my head hurt!    Isn't it easier to just buy a set of longer tees and see if things improve?  

Well yes, but that's what we golf nerds do is analyze it to death

On 8/25/2016 at 7:28 AM, Pete F said:

I like to use Dr Scholls spray foot powder on the face of the driver.

You can tell exactly where you hit it and adjust to come closer to the sweet spot.

Of course you can't do this when score counts.

I do the same thing. My golf buddies don't seem to mind if I use it during a round. I think it's because I don't pose that much a threat to begin with. 

[natureboy]

On 8/26/2016 at 2:52 PM, DaveP043 said:

Jeepers, guys, you're making my head hurt!    Isn't it easier to just buy a set of longer tees and see if things improve?  

Yes, but I'm trying to understand his points.