Start of the 26 taking most of the force (5)

Guardian Cryptic #29229 | 23 Down | 2023-11-16
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I haven't cracked this one yet — but the brilliant team at Fifteensquared have:

A charade of TEE (‘start of 26’ which is HOLE, following the golf reference) plus ‘th[e]’ minus its last letter (‘most of’). For the definition, to have teeth means to have sufficient force to be effective (“The US Supreme Court’s ethics guidelines have no teeth”).

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