a. trans. To place (a ball) on the tee. b. intr. with off: To play a ball from the tee.
1673. Wedderburn’s Vocab., 37. 38 (Jam.). Statumina pilam arena, Teaz your ball on the sand.
1737. [see teed below].
1828. Scott, Jrnl., 14 May. I can only tee the ball; he must strike the blow with the golf club himself.
1862. Chambers’ Encycl., IV. 823/2. An attendant, called a caddy, who carries his clubs and ‘tees’ his balls.
1895. Linskill, Golf, ii. (ed. 3), 10. To tee a ball for driving, it is usual to place it on some small eminence on the surface of the turf…. A ball is sometimes teed on a few short blades of stiff grass.
1895. Westm. Gaz., 19 June, 7/2. Will any golfer send a shilling to open the subscription? Or, preferably, will the Royal and Ancient tee off?
1900. Macm. Mag., Aug., 773. The golfer proceeds to the tee-ing off spot, tees up his ball, mentally imagines that he is standing on a species of gridiron, and places his feet in the position [etc.].
Hence Teed ppl. a., placed on or played from a tee; Teeing vbl. sb.; also attrib. as teeing-ground, a small patch a small patch of ground from which the ball is teed off.
1737. Ramsay, Scot. Prov., xxxiii. (1750), 89. That’s a tee’d ba’.
1824. Scott, Rodgauntlet, Let. xiii. All that is managed for ye like a tee’d ball.
1890. John Bull, 3 April, 226/2. Two hundred yards … distance from the teeing-ground.
1893. Stevenson, Catriona, xviii. They had taken a word from the golfing green, and called me the ‘Tee’d Ball.’
1903. Westm. Gaz., 11 Sept., 4/2. Far better to recognise that placing is virtually teeing, and have done with it.
