How to Make a Solid, Safe, and Sound Teepad

A great teepad is big, flat, firm, level, grippy and safe, with a nice flat follow-through area in front of the pad. There should be no holes to step into, cliffs to fall off of, or stumps to trip over. Ideally, you want the tee pad surface at ground level.

If you can meet these criteria, you will have great tees. Just be sure you have the energy, resources, time and determination to do it the right way 18 times.

As fall descends on New England, we're on the verge of completing another course, this one in Warren, Massachusetts, which we started working on in June of 2015. It'll have 18 holes on roughly 30 acres with two baskets per hole, Green Prodigy T1s for the shorts, and Blue Prodigy T1s for the longs. The shorter layout is about 5000 feet; the long one stretches beyond 7000 feet.

We just finished the last of 18 tee pads, and they're beautiful. The following description of how to make this kind of tee pad omits a bunch of stoopid stuff we did, and otherwise improves on the process in small but significant details.

What you need:

Supplies

Two 90' rolls of Fly18 rubber
Forty-five 12' pressure treated 6x6s (for the front and sides of our 6 x 12' frames)
Seventy-two 3/8 x 12" galvanized spikes (for nailing the frame together)
One hundred and eight 3/8 x 10" galvanized spikes (for securing the rubber) with matching galvanized washers
Twenty-one 8' 2x4s (18 of these for the back of the frame, secured below ground level, 2 for the Clapper Thing, and 1 for the screeder board)
Door hinge
Box of 1.5" screws
Twenty yards of trap rock
Twenty yards of gravel
Twenty yards of stone dust
Gas and chainsaw gas and oil

Tools for cutting the rubber

Utility knife with extra blades
2x4 Clapper Thing -- two 2x4s joined by a door hinge to form a sort of scissors
Tape measure
Carpenters square
Silver Sharpie for drawing the cut lines

Tools for building the tee pad

Tractor (or Bobcat) to dig the hole and move the material
ATV for transport
Gas-powered plate compactor
Compound sliding mitre saw (to cut the timbers)
Battery drill (with backup battery)
A claw hammer (to pull out spikes)
A sledge hammer
A hammer between a claw and a sledge hammer (the best one for hammering in the spikes)
Metal rakes
Pointed shovels
Square shovel
Pickax
Loppers (to cut roots when you dig the holes)
Broom (to sweep the rubber when you're done)
Iron bar (for dislodging rocks that the tractor can't reach)
Screeder board (a 2 x 4 that's at least as long as the frame is wide)
Watering can (to soak the gravel and stone dust)
Hand tamper (for the corners of the pad)
Chainsaw with extra sharp chains, chainsaw tool and chainsaw gas and bar oil (cause you never know)

Cutting the Rubber

Unroll the rubber on a firm, flat surface. Measure each 10' section on each side as well as diagonally to ensure your pads will be rectangles rather than rhombuses. Draw your cut lines with a silver Sharpie, and slide the bottom 2x4 of the hinged Clapper Thing beneath the rubber. This bottom 2x4 raises the rubber off the ground, making it easier to cut. The top 2x4 serves as a guide to help you draw and cut straight lines.

Each blade lasts about two cuts.

Making the Frames

Cut 9 of your 12' timbers in half. Each 6' piece is the front of the pad, and is wedged between the 12' timbers on the side, making the outside of the frame 12' x 7'. In the back, because we don't want players to have to step over anything, we screw a 2x4 below ground level in the back of the frame to keep it square as we move it into place. We drill two holes on each front side and hammer the front of the frame together with the 12" spikes.

Be sure to measure diagonally, to ensure rectangular integrity.

-Installing the Tee Pad -

This is where the tractor comes in. Dig a hole about a foot deep, and wide and long enough to accommodate your frame. Put down a layer of trap rock, and place your frame on top of that. Place big rocks under the frame to bring the front to ground height, and until the whole thing -- all four sides -- are level.

Now we add and smooth more trap rock, and then gravel, which we smooth, wet and compact. Once we're about four inches from the top of the frame, we begin to add, wet, smooth and compact loads of stone dust until we have a hard, flat surface that's even with the top of the frame.

We scrape off the excess stone dust with our trusty screeder board, position the rubber on top, and run the compactor one last time, this time over the rubber. We then pour water on the rubber to check for puddles that betray small indentations in our pad, adding a final handful of stone dust wherever necessary.

Next we drill holes in the rubber and stake it in with six spikes with washers. And finally, we test out our work.