The tee shot – which club should a beginner use from the tee?
Whether you’re an experienced player or completely new to the game, being able to hit a good tee shot is essential. Anyone who has experienced it knows just how addictive the feeling is when you pull out the driver – the biggest club in the bag – and send the ball soaring with a perfect strike and maximum distance. But tee shots can also feel intimidating on those days when your swing just isn’t quite there. That’s when it’s important to find the perfect balance between distance and control. Here’s our guide to choosing the right club from the tee.
Driver – the natural choice for maximum distance
The driver has long been the natural choice from the tee, simply because it hits the ball the furthest. Statistics show that the longer you hit your tee shots, the fewer strokes you generally need to get the ball into the hole. Becoming proficient with the driver is therefore an important factor in lowering your handicap and well worth spending time practising.
In modern golf, most tour professionals are choosing to use the driver more and more frequently. It is often better to be further down the fairway and playing an approach shot with a 9-iron rather than a 6-iron – even if the ball is sitting in slightly thicker grass.
That said, ending up in the rough from time to time is perfectly fine. The real problems begin when shots stray further than that and end up in hazards or beyond the white out of bounds markers. That’s when scoring becomes much more difficult.
Finding the right driver for your game is an important step towards feeling confident on the tee. A good place to start is identifying where your most common miss tends to go. Is it a slice? Or a hook? Do you hit the ball too high or too low?
Most modern drivers are adjustable, meaning you can fine-tune the ball flight afterwards. A slice – which curves to the right for right-handed golfers and to the left for left-handed golfers – is the most common miss. Studies suggest that around seven out of ten golfers struggle with it. If that sounds familiar, a draw-biased driver could be a good option. Extra weight in the heel of the club helps the clubhead rotate more effectively through impact and can reduce a slice.
Another tip is to increase the loft on your driver. This changes the clubface angle, making the club sit in a more closed position, which can also help reduce a slice.
Om det gäller även dig kan en draw-viktad driver vara ett bra val. Extra vikt i klubbans häl hjälper dig att rotera klubbhuvudet bättre genom svingen och motverka slicen.
Ett annat tips är att höja loftet på din driver. Då justeras vinkeln på klubbhuvudet så att klubban ligger mer “stängd”, vilket också kan hjälpa till att minska slicen.
Fairway wood from the tee – combining confidence and distance
A long-standing piece of golfing wisdom is that you can try hitting your tee shots with a fairway wood on the days when you and your driver simply aren’t getting along.
For some golfers, the shorter shaft – combined with teeing the ball lower – makes it easier to strike the centre of the clubface and keep the ball in play while still achieving excellent distance. Swedish US Open champion Henrik Stenson, for example, used this strategy with great success throughout his career.
As mentioned earlier, it is becoming increasingly common to use the driver as often as possible. However, if a fairway wood gives you greater confidence and reassurance from the tee, it can be just as good a choice and, thanks to a better strike, can sometimes even travel further than your driver.
You may have heard the term “spoon”, which simply refers to a 3-wood with around 15 degrees of loft. As a beginner, however, it may be wiser to choose a 5-wood with approximately 18 degrees of loft instead – it is simply more forgiving and easier to hit. Loft is your friend!
These days, it is also becoming more common to carry higher-lofted fairway woods, both among professionals and amateurs. A 7-wood or even a 9-wood can be an excellent option from the tee. The extra loft makes it easier to launch the ball into the air.
Hybrid and utility clubs – often the safer option
A hybrid is a cross between a fairway wood and an iron. It is often a favourite among new golfers because it is extremely forgiving and easy to hit. It will usually travel a shorter distance than both a driver and a fairway wood, but if you feel confident with a hybrid, it can certainly be a great option from the tee. It is also highly versatile from both the fairway and the rough.
A utility club looks more like an iron but is designed to be more stable and powerful. It is best suited to golfers with higher clubhead speeds who want to keep their ball flight lower. If your swing speed is not high enough, a utility club can be difficult to hit well and challenging to launch into the air.
Both hybrids and utility clubs can be very useful choices from the tee, particularly on shorter par 4s.