Can You Use Mud Or Sawdust To Make A Tee For Your Golf Ball?

When you’re teeing up your golf ball, do you have to use a tee peg, or can you use other natural materials that might be handy? Can you use mud or sawdust?

Can you tee your ball up on mud?
Can you tee your ball up on mud?
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In golfing times past, players would often use sand to tee up their golf ball. In fact, caddies would sometimes carry sand for their players and there would often be small piles of sand to use for teeing.

In more recent times, most golfers now use a specially designed tee peg to place their ball on. The first patent for a golf tee (a rubber plate that sat on the ground with prongs to hold the ball) dates from 1889. The first tee that went into the ground was patented in 1892 by a chap from Surrey called Percy Ellis.

Today, some people prefer a wooden tee, others favour bamboo or plastic, some favour the castle tee that makes sure the ball is a specific height above the ground.

Using a properly designed, conforming golf tee is surely the most appropriate way to peg up your ball but what’s the scenario if you don’t have any? Could you use some mud, sand or perhaps sawdust to create a tee for your golf ball?

ball on tee

A nice white wooden tee

(Image credit: Getty Images)

For a start, you’re not allowed to tee up your ball anywhere but within the teeing area for a hole. You can’t create a little mound of earth on the fairway and balance your ball on it. That would be breaking Rule 8.1 – You would be improving the conditions affecting the stroke by altering the surface of the ground.

If you are teeing off, Rule 6.2b(2) says that the ball may be either played from the ground or from a tee placed within the teeing ground.

You don’t have to tee your ball up when it’s in the teeing ground. You can also, under 6.2b(3) – alter the surface of the ground in the teeing area, such as by making an indentation with a club or foot.

So, yes, you can create a little mud tee that raises the ball off the ground in the teeing area.

Rule 6.2b(2) also says that if you’re playing the ball from the ground (which is fine), that includes sand or other natural materials put in place to put the ball on.

You can then, tee your ball on sand, mud or sawdust if you happened to have some. All of those are natural materials and would be permitted for use by Rule 6.2b(2).

There are some regulations if you are using a proper tee. Equipment Rule 6.2 on tees says a tee must not: be longer than 4 inches (101.6 mm), be designed or manufactured in such a way that it could indicate line of play, unduly influence the movement of the ball or otherwise assist the player in making a stroke or in his play.

So you do have to be a little careful. If you stick with good old sand or mud, you’ll be fine!

Fergus Bisset
Contributing Editor

Fergus is Golf Monthly's resident expert on the history of the game and has written extensively on that subject. He has also worked with Golf Monthly to produce a podcast series. Called 18 Majors: The Golf History Show it offers new and in-depth perspectives on some of the most important moments in golf's long history. You can find all the details about it here.

He is a golf obsessive and 1-handicapper. Growing up in the North East of Scotland, golf runs through his veins and his passion for the sport was bolstered during his time at St Andrews university studying history. He went on to earn a post graduate diploma from the London School of Journalism. Fergus has worked for Golf Monthly since 2004 and has written two books on the game; "Great Golf Debates" together with Jezz Ellwood of Golf Monthly and the history section of "The Ultimate Golf Book" together with Neil Tappin , also of Golf Monthly.

Fergus once shanked a ball from just over Granny Clark's Wynd on the 18th of the Old Course that struck the St Andrews Golf Club and rebounded into the Valley of Sin, from where he saved par. Who says there's no golfing god?

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