Part two of “tee week” is my review of the Zero Friction Golf Tees.
The Concept
The concept with Zero Friction Golf Tees is simple. The three prongs of the tee barely touch the ball and drastically reduce the contact area between the ball and the tee. The less contact area, the less chance of friction which may cause unwanted side spin or distance loss due to the drag of the tee.
According to their testing, Zero Friction tees will provide four more yards of distance and about six more yards of accuracy than a standard tee for someone with an average swing speed of 100mph. Hey that’s me. I can’t find any stats for slower or faster swing speeds though so if you’re at 90 or 120 I don’t know what to tell you. Logic would say the faster the swing the more impact the tee will have.
Biodegradable
One thing the tree-huggers will like is that the Zero Friction Tees are biodegradable. They’re 100% biodegradable in UV light. One thing the courses will like is that the tees will not cause problems with mowers.
On The Course
There are about 2-3 times per year for me when I hit my driver as pure as ever for about a 1-2 week period. This has happened every year for at least five years. During that period of time I hit those proverbial 340 yard drives…
As soon as I started using the ZF tees I entered that driving zone. My drives were flying way farther than normal and ending up a good 50 yards farther on average. This did last about 1-2 weeks for me and then my yardage did go back to a normal length. For me that length is about 280-290 with the occasional 310 sprinkled in. I’m thinking it was coincidence or a bit of placebo effect in my head which helped me hit those drives farther for a while.
While hitting my normal decent drives I find I do like the Zero Friction tees. I can’t say they’ve added 20 yards to my drives–like every idiotic gadget add on The Golf Channel would lead you to believe–but they sure haven’t hurt them. I do feel that I perhaps get a few yards more of carry but when you’re talking 290 yards what percentage is four yards? 1-3%? Hey, every little bit helps.
I haven’t tracked my accuracy with the ZF tees so I can’t say whether or not I hit more fairways. I hit a fair amount of fairways regardless of what tees I play. I’m at 64% and Mr. Tiger Woods is at 55.36%. (We don’t need to talk about any other stats though).
Durability
The Zero Friction Tees are fairly durable compared to standard wood tees. The ZF tees rarely break with crisply struck drivers but break about as often as wood tees on iron shots.
Critiques
The ZF tees are flexible. They bend. So if the ground is hard, it can be difficult to get the tee in the ground without it bending. The flexibility of the tee also makes it tough to use if you like to use your tees to fix ball marks on the greens.
In very windy conditions, the ball is resting so lightly on the three prongs of the ZF tee that it can be blown right off the tee. Sometimes you can see the ball oscillating on the tee in windy conditions.
Since the tees are flexible they slingshot themselves quite far. Sometimes I’ve had a tee end up 10 yards in front or behind me. Yes, 10 yards! You don’t want to lose these tees and you may slow down play a bit looking for them!
Models Available
The tees I tested were all the original, long version. They’re 2.75″ in length and come in 50 packs of various colors.
There are new ZF tees available which I haven’t tried yet. The shorter “Hybrid” tees at 1.75″ are for irons, hybrids and fairway woods.
Conclusion
Who couldn’t use a tee which gives you a few extra percentage points of distance an accuracy over your opponent(s)? I enjoy using Zero Friction tees and find I like their performance. I’m not bombing my drives 30 yards longer or anything like that, but I do have confidence in hitting good shots when I’m using them.
You can pick up Zero Friction Golf Tees online at Edwin Watts Golf.
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