Tether vs flyaway tees.
What you actually lose when you do not have a tether, measured in tees, dollars, and time per session.
The math of a single range session
A 100-ball range bucket is the most common practice unit. If you tee up the driver for half of those balls and lose a tee every 15 shots (a generous estimate for plastic tees on a hard mat), that is roughly 3 lost tees per bucket. At $0.15 each for plastic, $0.45 per session does not sound bad. Across 50 sessions a year that is $22.50 and 150 plastic tees in a landfill.
The hidden cost is not money. It is time and rhythm. Every retrieved tee is a 15-second interruption to your swing thought.
Wooden tees fail differently
Wooden tees on a mat do not "fly away" because they barely insert in the first place. They tip over, snap on a slightly off-center strike, or get pushed flat into the synthetic grass after one swing. Different failure mode, same outcome: you are reaching for a new tee every shot.
What a tether changes
A tethered tee that returns to position has a useful life closer to its material lifetime, not its flyaway lifetime. TPU survives thousands of strikes. The cord is the failure point, and the cord costs cents to replace.
Net: one $29 4-pack should outlast a full year of practice for most range golfers.
Common questions
How many tees do golfers lose per session?
On a hard hitting mat with plastic tees, 2 to 4 per 100 balls is typical for driver swings.
Do wooden tees work on hitting mats?
No. Mats have a dense rubber underlayer that wooden tees cannot penetrate, and the synthetic grass alone is too floppy to hold them upright.