Teed Off!

Is your golf course looking a little messy? I have a suggestion. Tell the golf pro to start charging for tees.

No, not tee times or T-shirts. Tees. Those wooden or plastic pegs that golfers grab by the handful then shatter and scatter all over the driving range and tee boxes. Not only do they make an otherwise clean course look ratty and unkempt, they’re harmful to maintenance equipment and a waste of your staff’s time and manpower.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that golfers take all the free tees they can and then are too lazy, discourteous or both to bend over and pick up the broken pieces after they’ve served their purpose. We should try to get golfers to treat used tees the way they do ball marks: Pick up your own and at least one or two others. Oh, wait, they do treat them the same: They don’t fix ball marks, either. (Don’t get me started on raking bunkers.)

I’ve been teed off about tees for some time. I recently played behind a foursome in which one of the guys left an unbroken four-inch tee on every tee box. I picked up all 18, fully intact and still stuck in the ground (how he managed that could be the basis for an instructional video), and after finishing I turned them into the golf shop and told the pro to put them back in the jug for the next golfer.

Broken tees on the tee box aren’t just unattractive, they can wreak havoc with maintenance equipment. Or so I’d been hearing for many years. I recently asked some technicians with the leading maintenance companies if it were true and, indeed, it is. Tees can ruin bedknives and reels on mowers. Rotary mowers can handle tee abuse, so maybe we can launch an education campaign that tells golfers to throw their used tees into the rough. But that still means they’d have to bend over and pick them up, so I guess that ain’t happening.

Plastic tees aren’t as harmful to mowers as wooden tees because wood has fiber and grain while plastic tees are molded and tend to snap rather than shear. The difference might not sound like much, but run over a few thousand tees a day and the damage will add up. Fast.

Both plastic and wooden tees can cause deflection/distortion to reel blades and bedknives, resulting in a poor quality of cut and additional stress to the plant. Think we can convince golfers to pick up tees by telling them that the broken pieces actually can ruin the quality of the turfgrass and therefore the playability of the course? Yeah, I doubt it, too.

You probably already know that manufacturers don’t recommend trying to straighten or adjust a distorted bedknife. That means they need to be replaced, which costs $40 to 80 each, plus labor, plus the downtime needed for the work to be done. Even worse is if the reel becomes damaged or the blades bend or snap: Replacement will set you back $150 to $300, plus labor and downtime.

Maybe you need to take the tee issue to your general manager or whoever is responsible for club finances. Remind him or her that setting up a teeing ground already involves labor costs—moving tee markers, positioning the ball washer, emptying the trash, replacing divots; add to that blowing old broken tees away or picking them up before mowing. It all takes time and time is money.

Now take everything mentioned above and multiply it a few times for the practice range, where golfers rarely hit anything but their drivers, spraying shards of tees all over the place. I can understand that they don’t want to walk out ahead of other practicers to pick up their broken tees. But why do they leave broken and unbroken tees in the hitting area, stuck in the ground, even in little piles?

And to anyone who suggests that the answer is biodegradable tees, I have one word: Yuck. On a hot, humid day, they quickly turn into a mess of fertilized goo in the pocket of your favorite golf pants or shorts.

So let’s go back into the golf shop. Tees should not be given out for free. Tees should cost something. How about 10 tees for $1, and let the proceeds go to your junior golf program. (Golfers wouldn’t pay for them if the sign said the money will go to replace reels and bedknives, but it really should.)

Will charging for tees solve the problem? Probably not. But it’s worth considering, along with whatever can be done to help golfers realize that their actions, even as simple as leaving a broken tee on the ground, has consequences.

Tim Moraghan, principal, ASPIRE Golf (tmoraghan@aspire-golf.com). Follow Tim’s blog, Golf Course Confidential at http://www.aspire-golf.com/buzz.html or on Twitter @TimMoraghan