Am I an oddball?

How to make it short. I've been learning to play golf for a year and a half. About a month ago I decided to take it super seriously and started a drill to learn compression. Last week I practiced this drill with a ball several hours a day for several days in a row. During one day after two hours or so I started to feel huge difference. The contact with the ball started to feel pure, the ball made a different sound and it jumped from the club face with a different energy. This is only a pinch, the ball has about 50 yards carry, only a little hinge and short finish. A kind of hinge and hold with a seven iron. I think, maybe naively, that I learned to compress the ball within this exercise. For this exercise I used a simple , cheap matt. Now after a week I went to a local driving range hoping to repeat my new magical trick there. I felt comfortable hitting the balls with the technique, but the feel at the impact was somehow strange. I could not repeat the wonderful, pure feeling I had with my little mat. So I went to the car, grabbed the mat and brought it to the driving range. I placed the mat beside the regular one, obviously, my mat looks more like a brush, whereas the regular mat at the range is very hard and smooth.  I tried my exercise again, this time with my mat. Immediately I felt a difference. So soft, it felt almost like grass compared to the hard, smooth mat available. For the rest of my practice, I only used my mat, enjoying the soft, smooth feel. I could feel I was compressing almost all my balls, but unlike with the regular mat, the feeling at the impact was not hard, but very soft. I felt no resistance from the mat. Then I tried longer swings, half swings with the same technique of compressing the ball. It was to me a kind of golf enlightenment. For the first time in my life I could hit ball after all, feeling cool, confident and compressing the balls, of course, with ocassional mishits. I told a friend of mine about this experience and how excited I was that I could start practicing and making progress now and that my mat makes my practice sessions so delightful. But he said something like you are crazy if you bring your own mat to a driving range. So I don't know, is it crazy if you enjoy hitting balls more, if you like your practice more? What harm does my mat do compared to the hard, smooth regular one available?

As for my expectations, I would like to gradually prolong my swing without losing this confidence and compression of the ball. I used to swing fully with all kinds of outcomes, hardly ever compressing the ball, but I am not interested in this kind of sloppy golf. I want to compress my balls and learn to hit balls with confidence and enjoy all hits if possible.

I hope someone here can hear me and understand. Or maybe I am still as crazy and naive as I was when I started to learn golf.

I'm forcing myself to go to crappier driving ranges with lots of people and bad mats on occasion because getting out of my comfort zone is something I view as important to helping me understand and adapt my swing as necessary. Even something like swinging across the line up lines on the mats we have is enough to get me inside my head so I try to embrace it and get used to it. If that makes sense.

OP an oddball?

a person or thing that is atypical, bizarre, eccentric, or nonconforming, especially one having beliefs that are unusual but harmless.

Yes.

¨That is an important aspect of golf,  I think, out of comfort zone, but for a beginner, isnt it better to start with comfort zone and build from there? A golf course makes a lot of out of comfort zone situations. I'd like to first explore the secrets of crisp, compressed contact. For example, I was struggling to nicely hit the ball for a year. I went to a driving range three times a week, every week hardly ever having the joy of hitting the ball nice. More like trial and error than having any confidence in hitting the ball the way I like it and want it.    And now when it is beginning to work, I realize that the struggle and discomfort partly comes down to the hard mats. Now with a softer mat, I can   -  at last - really enjoy practice. This week it was the first time in my life that I would smile after almost every ball I hit. THe difference between these two mats to me is simply that even if you nicely hit the ball first, with the regular mat, after having the pleasure of hitting the ball and compressing it, immediately the fun is spoilt as your clubhead hits the hard mat. In the other case, after nicely hitting the ball, the clubhead brushes through the soft surface of the mat leaving the pleasure of the flush impact intact. I hope this makes sense, otherwise I don't know.

If golf is not about pleasure of hitting a ball nicely and enjoying this feel of pure contact, then what is? Score, score, score... I know, but I don't think it will ever be my priority to lower my scores. I am in love with the crisp contact. I am into sensual golf rather than competetive golf.

As for people who might wonder why anyone would care so much about different mats as golf is played on grass... yes, I enjoy the feeling on the grass, but I have only played full shots, full swings on the grass and studied my divots and of course, when the hit was good, when the hit worked out, it is pleasure, too, or more, just I am saying that hard mats are so different from grass and not fun and my little mat is much closer to the softness of grass without the resistance of the soil, of course.

Beware the kind of mat you are describing in bold. They are extremely forgiving and give you a false sense of security because you can hit an inch or two behind the ball and it will still feel pure. You're essentially hitting the ball off of a tee. I would give the harder mats a chance. Hogan and Trevino, two of the greatest ball strikers of all time, learned to hit off hard and dry turf.

I would agree with Swede, although I'd add one thing, that is, you should hit off of non comfort zone mats, ones that are hard and are pretty much used up. What I do is this, the drill I do does about the same thing as the OP describes, I think you may benefit from slowing down a tad, learn to feel what it's like to hit down on a harder surface, you won't get that "plush" feel, But, the strike of the ball should feel the same, unless your hitting rocks.. Also, if at all possible, try to hit balls of of different types of grass, to get use to how they feel, that way, if you encounter  them on a course, you won't get all nervous.

You don't compress the ball by squashing it between the club face and ground, it's just by delivering the club head to the ball with enough speed at a descending angle, so you hit the ball before the ground! if you hit the ground first you've then lost the speed needed to compress the ball, for lower swing speed players, like myself, it helps a bit if you have low compression balls. Don't take your own mat to the range, it's really not necessary, if anything, try a grass range, but the key is to work on hitting the ball before the ground and having the lowest point of your club heads swing arc to bottom out a few inches past the ball!

So let me sum up and ask a few questions, I don't want to argue, just would like to clarify the thing.

I used to hit balls off a rubber tee a lot. I never had the new feeling that I have now. Is it possible that rather than learning to hit down on the ball I learned to hit the balls solid or flush? I definitely get a very new feeling with most balls now so I'd like to know what the change is in fact. Mind you, I am talking only about quarter or half swings, with full swings, I haven't got that consistency yet at all.

I admit the mistake I may be still doing is that I make a divot under the ball or with a soft, fluffy mat, I scoop the ball rather than hit down on it and it feels flush, because probably this new flush feeling does not guarantee compressing the ball, right?

So the only way to make sure I compress or hit down on the ball would be a video or grass and checking the divot in the grass.

But I have an idea -  if hitting down on the ball is the point, then with a rubber tee the trick would be slightly clip the rubber tea and then feel the clubhead touches the mat. It is a distinctive feeling, different from ""flipping at" or "scooping" the rubber tee.

The difference is you can feel the club hitting into the firmer mat and you lose more clubhead speed through the ball. Fluffy mat also allows you to hit the ball a little higher on the face because of the ball being teed up.

OK so as I understand now, my mat is even worse than hard mats. The only pro seems to be - actually two - nicer feeling resembling hitting off turf and preventing injuries.

So if I don't want to learn bad habits with a soft mat and don't want to injure myself with hard mats, then a rubber tee comes to mind.   So what's wrong with a rubber tee? If you clip the tee without touching the mat before, you know you haven't made a fat shot. And if you hit the mat after clipping the tee, you are reassured you hit down on the ball. Is that correct? With a rubber tee, the lowest point of the arc can be realized in front of the ball, whereas with a hard mat, even when the AoA is correct, the mat will prevent the arc to continue downward and will flatten it which is very different feeling from hitting of turf. At least the softer mat allows one to make the lowest point of the arc really in front of the ball as there is some room to go further down.

What do you think about this, guys?

It says no bounce, swing down and through, it sounds like what my mat is allowing me to do and you criticize it. So either the realfeelgolfmats is a big lie or?

http://www.realfeelgolfmats.com

I appreciate your opinions and explanations.

The tee gives you a larger margin for error. The same swing could produce a fat shot if the ball were on the ground.