BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION Conventional golf tees or pegs consist of an elongated shank or spike which is sharpened at one end and carries at its other end a cupped head for supporting a golf ball. The tee spike is generally parallel sided but may, particularly in tees mounded from plastic, taper uniformly from their headed ends towards their pointed ends.

The heads of conventional golf tees have a generally inverted conical shape with the base of the cone being concavely cupped so that the rim of the cup provides a seat for a golf ball when the tee is held vertical or nearly so when the pointed end of its ground spike is pressed into the ground. When the ball is struck from the tee the ball needs to clear the semi-circular edge of the cup in the direction of its travel and the friction so generated reduces the striking energy imparted to the ball. This together with the fact that in many cases the club strikes the firmly embedded tee in its path through the ball to inhibit the

follow through of the club further adds to reduced ball striking efficiency. Additionally a struck tee, particularly when made from wood, when firmly embedded in the ground is very often broken or badly damaged when struck by a club and the tees further frequently damage or at least scratch the golf ciub.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION A golf ball tee according to the invention includes a ground engaging spike which is sharpened at one end and carries on its other end a suitable formation for supporting a golf ball when the spike is held substantially vertical and a bulbous formation which projects outwardly from the spike and which extend over a portion of the length of the spike between its sharpened end and the ball supporting formation, with the spike and its bulbous formation being circular in cross-section.

The ball supporting formation of the tee is cup shaped and has a circular rim on which a ball may be supported. The ball supporting formation may, however, have a substantially square rim with the corners of the square projecting upwardly from the sides of the rim to provide four points on which the ball may be supported with the sides of the rim clear of the ball. In another form of the invention half of the cup rim is semi-circular and the other half of the rim has two sides which are angled from the ends of the semi-circular edge to a point to

provide a semi-circular ball seat and a remote point on which a ball may be supported with the angled sides of the cup clear of the ball.

In a preferred form of the invention the spike of the tee and the bulbous formation are circular in cross-section.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The invention is now described by way of example only with reference to the drawings in which : FIGURE 1 is a perspective view of one embodiment of the golf tee of the invention, FIGURE 2 is a fragmentary side elevation of a ball support formation on a golf tee of the invention, FIGURE 3 is a plan view of the Figure 2 ball support formation, FIGURE 4 is a side elevation of the Figure 1 golf tee which is pegged in the ground and is supporting a golf ball, and

FIGURE 5 is a partial sectioned side elevation of a further embodiment of the golf tee of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The golf tee of the invention is shown in Figure 1 to include a ground engaging shank or spike 10 which is pointed at one end 12 and carries at its other end a cup shaped ball support formation 14. This tee could be made from any suitable material such as plastic but is preferably made from wood.

The spike 10 of the golf tee is circular in cross-section includes, over a portion of its length a radially outwardly projecting bulbous formation 16 which is of significantly larger diameter than the remainder of the spike 10, as seen in the drawings.

The ball support formation 14, in this embodiment of the invention, is substantially conventional and has the shape of an inverted cone with the base of the cone inwardly concave with a radius of curvature less than that of a conventional golf ball so that the contact area between the ball and tee is only on the rim 18 of the formation.

In use, a golf ball 20 is teed up in the conventional manner by placing the ball on the tee and then by means of the baii pressing the tee into the ground. With the tee of the invention the tee is pressed further into the ground than the desired teed up height of the ball and then withdrawn to the desired teed up height, as shown in Figure 4, so that the pointed end 12 of the tee is withdrawn from its formation in the ground as shown in the drawing. The only portion of the tee now engaging the hole which has been made by it in the soil is in the equatorial region of the bulbous portion 16 of the tee as indicated by the arrow 22 in the drawing.

When the ball 20 is now struck, from the left in Figure 4, even if this is accomplished cleanly without any contact between the club and the tee, the frictional drag of the ball on the right hand edge of the tee rim 18 will cause the peg to tilt about its pivot zone 22 in the direction of the arrow 24 in the drawing with very little effort and loss of ball energy. An additional advantage to the pivot action of the tee is that even should the club solidly strike the tee it will be tilted sharply to the right in the drawing and very often be ejected from the hole 14 without breakage as is often the case with tees having parallel sided spikes 10 which are embedded in fairly hard ground.

Figures 2 and 3 illustrate a preferred form of ball support formation 26 to that illustrated and described with reference to Figures 1 and 4. The spike 10 of this

tee is identical to that of the Figure 1 tee. The ball support formation 26 is similar to that of the formation 14 of Figure 1 save that the formation is cut away from approximately diametrical points on the circular rim to provide a ball support point 28 remote from the remainder of the semi-circular rim portion 30 of the formation 26. As will be appreciated from Figure 2 a ball having a greater diameter than the radius of curvature of the formation 26 concavity will now only be in contact with the semi-circular rim portion 30 of the tee and the point 28 as the lines joining the rim portion 30 and the point 28 are downwardly curved clear of the ball as is seen in Figure 2. In use, this tee is pressed into the ground with the point 28 pointing in the direction of intended ball travel so that when the ball is struck from the tee the only frictional engagement between the ball and tee now is only the point 28 and not what would otherwise be the forward portion of the rim 30. Obviously with so small a contact area the frictional drag between the ball and tee is yet further reduced.

The tee of Figure 5 is moulded from a plastics material with its ball support <BR> formation 32 preferably being made from a softer material than that from which the spike 10 is made and which is moulded onto the upper end of the spike 10. <BR> <P>The upper surface profile of the formation 32 is the same as that of Figures 2 and 3.

The invention is not limited to the precise details as herein described. For

example the ball support formation 26 could be made square by cutting away the semi-circular rim portion 30 to resuit in a support formation which is square in plan and has four upstanding ball contact points 28.