SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. \u2014 I stood aghast when I saw what was happening. Wyndham Clark, the 36-hole leader of the 2026 U.S. Open, dropped his ball onto the ground on the tee box on the first hole, then hit his shot\u2014without teeing up his ball.<\/p>\n
Clark did it again on the 10th and 15th holes; both par-4s where he used an iron off the tee, but he has gone tee-less on multiple par-3s each of his rounds at Shinnecock, too.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a rare sight. Almost every PGA Tour player uses tees whenever they can, including on par-3s and on par-4s where they\u2019re teeing off with irons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve kinda figured out during the years,\u201d Clark said. \u201cI used to use a tee on certain holes, but I don\u2019t anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are those certain holes\u2014and his logic for each.<\/p>\n
When Wyndham goes \u2018no tee\u2019 on Par-3s <\/p>\n
Par-3s are a judgement call for Wyndham. If the hole is downwind or down-across, he\u2019ll use a tee. But if the hole is playing into the wind, or cross-into, then he\u2019ll go without a tee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just found that when the hole was into the wind, teeing it up would lead the ball to getting up there a little too high,\u201d Clark said. \u201cJust putting it off the ground helps me get a little bit of that lower launch.\u201d<\/p>\n
And no, in case you\u2019re wondering, no grass tees. Just a nice lie flat on the ground.<\/p>\n
When Wyndham goes \u2018no tee\u2019 on Par-4s <\/p>\n
Obviously anytime Clark has a driver in his hands, he\u2019s teeing it up. Higher if he wants more distance, lower if he wants more accuracy. A strategy so simple you should use it, too.<\/p>\n
But anytime he\u2019s got an iron in his hands? No tee. It\u2019s for the same reason as his into-the-wind par-3s. On the shots he did this today, his shots averaged between 6 and 8 degrees of launch, and apexed less than 75 ft.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really just trying to keep the ball out of the air\u2026If I can hit it in the fairway, I feel like I\u2019m pretty deadly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Should you? <\/p>\n
Probably not a great idea.<\/p>\n
Wyndham Clark is a high speed, high-ball hitter. His goal is keeping the ball down\u2014that\u2019s what gives him control.<\/p>\n
For the rest of us, the opposite problem is true. And because we\u2019re not operating with the same level of precision, the ball on a lower tee gives us some margin for error that we desperately need:<\/p>\n
Taking data from all players with all irons, the gain is 12 yards\u2014143.4 yards from the grass versus 155.3 yards off the tee. That\u2019s a full club less to reach the green. It\u2019s also nearly universal with each club as no iron from 3-iron to 9-iron showed less than a 9.7-yard increase. Does more distance mean more greens hit? You bet. On all shots from fairway-type grass, the green-in-regulation percentage for all handicaps was 36.2 percent. With a tee, it was 40.7 percent.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. \u2014 I stood aghast when I saw what was happening. Wyndham Clark, the 36-hole leader of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,36416,85],"class_list":["post-749141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-how-to","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}