The tee is one of the few things we have in common with a pro

I’ve been holding onto this novel little item for three years and finally found the right time to write about it as this weekend’s John Deere Classic completed its 50th playing.

I had marshaled on the 17th hole in 2018 and while doing so did a little “research.” The 17th is the entertaining par 5 that can make or break a contender on Sunday at TPC Deere Run. On the day I was up at the tee box helping signal ball direction from behind the players, I watched as each player hit and began to entertain myself by watching what happened to their tee. Most of the players picked it up after hitting. Others couldn’t be bothered to bend over, especially if they’d hit a ball off line into trees or rough. I started wondering if the pros have anything more unique to hit off of than the regular hacker and began to occasionally pick up tees that had been abandoned to kill time between groups.

The photo you see here shows that the pros’ pegs are just like the ones the Average Joe uses. Referring to the photo from the top down, the tees range from the crowned plastic to blonde wooden to skinny black tipped to regular wooden white with Duke Blue Devil logo to striped pegs and a Professional Tee System model to a Ping brand and USGA issued and so forth. So except for the Duke tee, the assortment is the same grouping I’d have in my pocket based on what I’ve gathered round after round from a course golf shop or ones found on the teeing ground.

I used to tee the ball on white tees only for superstitious good luck, then the blonde-colored wood tee was all you could find and I stuck to that, but now I just grab whatever I have handy, even the hard plastic ones that have become very popular in the last few years. I guess that shows how hard the driver-head material is nowadays because back when we used wood woods the thinking was not to use plastic tees because they could damage the wood. There ain’t no way today’s clubs are going to be damaged by a tee.

So there you have it, the pros don’t do anything more scientific or unusual to tee up their golf ball than we would ours. Hackers worldwide will have to figure out some other excuse for why they don’t play worth a darn.