The origin of the golf tee

When we think of teeing off, we instinctively think of doing it off the small pegs that we call tees. This wasn't always the way though. Before the unique design that we see in all shapes and sizes became popular, golfing was a very different game.

The word ‘tee’ comes from the Scottish Gaelic word Tigh, meaning ‘house’. This relates to the coloured circles or ‘house’ that is used in curling. This makes sense, because the first golf tees were made within a circle of one golf length around the last hole. This is quite different from modern golf, which has separate tee boxes for each hole.

Earlier in golf's history, golfers would take a wedge of the ground out with their golf club to tee from, but this decidedly bruteish practice was made out of fashion in the 1800’s when golfers would commonly use heaped piles of wet sand instead. Despite the evolution of the tee, some modern female golfers like Laura Davies and Michelle Wie have been known to use the older style of tee, using hacked up course ground. However, this is not recommended to any other golfers who would like to be able to return to their golf course of choice!

William Bloxsom Secretary and Arthur Douglas patented one of the first styles of portable golf tee in 1890. The design was a small rubber slab resting flat on the ground, with three rubber prongs or a hollow tube holding the ball in place. Other designs included the ‘Perfectum’ tee, which was a British patent for Percy Ellis in 1892. This tee consisted of a rubber circle with a metal spike pushed into the ground and was the first design to penetrate the ground.

Other countries also filed patents for portable tees, including the ‘Victor’ tee patented in Scotland by PM Matthews in 1897, and US patents by David Dalziel in 1896 and Dr George F Grant in 1899. Despite Grant being recognised as the inventor of the wooden golf tee by the United States Golf Association in 1991, none of these designs caught on successfully with golfers.

Golfers continued to use wet sand as tees until the 1900’s when William Lowell Sr began marketing his ‘Reddy Tee’. The ‘Reddy Tee’ was first marketed in the 1920’s and was originally green but this was soon changed to red, earning the tee its name. The design should be familiar to every golfer today, and consisted of a wooden peg with a concave head. One of the reasons why this tee succeeded where others failed was through Lowell’s success in getting professional golfers Walter Hagen and Joe Kirkwood Sr to use the tees during exhibition matches. After this, sales of the tee went up and Lowell stepped into mass production of the tees. The style was copied around the world and would eventually lead to tees becoming the common staple of golf that it is today.

Despite having so many shapes and sizes of tees on the market today, the ‘Reddy Tee’ design is still the most popular and iconic. It is difficult to imagine that just over 100 years ago, people were using sand instead.