D-Tee Plastic Golf Tee Review

D_Tee
Grade: A
Teacher’s Comments: Tough and Practical

If there’s a piece of golf equipment that’s the recipient of more tinkering than the humble tee, I don’t’ know what it is. Far beyond the wooden pedestal, inventors have tried a seemingly limitless variety of materials, shapes and and functions: Brush tees, three pronged tees, four pronged tees, spring loaded tees, long tees, short tees, depth control tees, castle shaped tees, bamboo tees, biodegradable cornstarch tees, cross cut tees, low resistance tees, slice elimination tees, slim tees, fat tees, tubular tees as well as a variety of novelty tees designed to look like football helmets, flowers, animals and so on.

And each one of them likely will fit SOMEONE’s golf game to a tee.

Part of it has to be that getting into the tee manufacturing business is a relatively inexpensive way of becoming a golf entrepreneur. In fact, not a week goes by without an email arriving in the GolfBlogger inbox from a Chinese company promising to make cheap tees from my specifications.

Into this breech charge the makers of the D-Tee, a blade shaped, medium length reusable tee.

The D-Tee is made from a curious plastic, seemingly hard, but still flexible when struck by a club. I’ve used them off and on over the summer and have not managed to break one, and yet, they bounce into the air with every shot.

Putting the tee into the ground is a bit counter-intuitive. My first instinct was to align it so that the thin side points to the target. The proper method is to align the flat side logo in that direction.

Considered purely as a tee, the D-Tee likely does no better or worse than any other product out there. I absolutely can’t say whether or not I was ten yards longer, or straighter or otherwise.

But to their credit, the D-Tee’s manufacturers make no such claim in their literature. Instead, they focus on cost savings, environmental impact and usefulness.

The last, first: In addition to its function as a tee, the D-Tee also serves admirably as a ball mark repair tool. More often than not, I use a spare tee to fix marks (I am notorious for forgetting to pocket an actual tool). The D-Tee is much better than my usual skinny sticks.

The D-Tee also is designed with a serrated edge to allow you to scrape mud and dirt off your club faces; the pointed tip is sharp, and durable enough to clean grooves.

The company also claims environmental advantages with a highly durable tee. All of those tee corpses you see on the boxes, and along the fairways take a long time to degrade, especially if they’re painted or laminated. Even if thrown away in a proper recepticle, they still will linger in dumps.

As for cost, D-Tee is priced at $13 for 16 tees, or about 80 cents each. By comparison, a wood tee costs 3 - 5 cents. If, like me, you destroy 8 to ten tees a round, a single D-Tee would pay for itself in two to three rounds.

But the tee seems so sturdy that I don’t know that you’d ever need sixteen; so perhaps its the kind of thing you buy and share with others in your foursome.