Mats vs. Grass at Practice Range

[sean_miller]

I hit about the same off either surface. I go to where there's more room and the people are less annoying - that part is random.

[The Recreational Golfer]

Grass is more honest. You can hit it fat off most varieties of mats and get a good shot out of it. Not so off grass.

[TigerWoodz]

All our ranges are off mats,there are no grass areas and i hate hitting off mats,i just cant do it consistantly,yet i get out on the course and im fine,any iron off the turf 9 out of ten times i will hit a good or ok shot...mats suck,or at least i suck off mats lol...

[Shorty]

Are driving range mats under-rated? Does hitting off grass really make a difference when it's barely grass at all? Does anyone hit from anywhere besides grass? Let the games begin!

As far as I'm concerned, mats might be OK if you only have a few minutes to warm up and you want to punch a few 6 irons into the net. They serve no other purpose. If they are soft, it's impossible to hit it fat, so all shots feel perfect. If they're hard, you are afraid of damaging your lofts or breaking your wrists.

A person who practices on mats but doesn't play might think he is a great ballstriker and then go onto a golf course and feel as if he'd never hit a golf ball in his life. Avoid at all costs. In fact, I'll go to the extreme and say that you are better not to practice at all than to hit iron shots off mats.

[Sherpat]

I've been hitting off the grass since I was 10 years old, but recently I have been experimenting back and forth between the two.

I agree with what a couple of the other guys just posted. Mats can mask a bad shot - particularly fat shots. The club head will glide through the plastic without digging down, and eventually make contact with the back of the ball. Perhaps even square, resulting in a decent looking (if slightly shorter) shot. That's exactly what happened to me. When I took up the game a few years ago, I decided to start by buying a cheap set of used clubs and spending the majority of my budget on lessons. The little driving range on my way home from work had good prices and friendly people, so I signed up for two month's worth. All they had was plastic mats, but at that time I didn't realize ranges had anything else. The guy giving me the lesson was a Jack Nicklaus fan, and taught me to play accordingly: the ball is always placed well forward, off your front (left, for me) instep, and doesn't vary from club to club. You just move your right foot back the longer the club you have. But the ball position never changes. It's always up near your front toe, from driver to wedge. After 10 or 15 lessons I looked GREAT. Putting the ball that far forward means a lot of high, arcing shots. And when you're new, that makes you feel like a god. So when my two months were up I figured I was ready for a real course. My first tee shot was fine. I didn't have a driver yet (still don't, come to think of it) but the 5-dollar garage sale 3-wood popped it down at least straight. Then came my first iron shot. I pulled out my (t)rusty Northwestern 'Tom Weiskopf' 7-iron, and took a perfect swing. The ball disappeared. Under a 4" x 3" square of upside-down sod. It turns out EVERYTHING I WAS HITTING ON THE PLASTIC MATS WAS FAT. I just couldn't tell, because the club eventually hit the back of the ball, which then went up. It took me almost two freakin' years to 1. figure out what the hell was going on. and 2. erase the muscle memory of all those lessons so I could fix it. I had developed a "lean back and sweep up" downswing, which works PERFECTLY on plastic mats with the ball placed across from your big toe. But on grass...? Ouch! Anyway, that's my cautionary tale. BUT...I think you're different. You've been playing off grass since you were 10, so you've grooved a swing and can make consistant contact with the ball in a more updated (back) position, I assume. So if you practice on plastic mats now I don't think it's going to change the years of muscle memory you've built up, unless you completely switch over and never play on grass again. Yeah, if you are looking for honest feedback from your strikes you'll get better results off natural turf. But for just getting out there and hitting a bucket now and then to feel your swing, I think plastic mats are fine. My concern would more be more for guys like me: if you're still trying to learn a swing, artificial surfaces may slow that learning curve. Oh - and they can be tough on the clubs. I snapped a couple of heads off the shafts during my lessons. I thought it was just the el-cheapo sticks at the time, but now that I've played on various surfaces I more suspect it due to swinging the club straight down onto a 1-inch thick piece of plastic laid over a concrete floor, half a foot behind a little white ball. (Having said that, I purchased a Vijay Singh "THE Golf Mat" for my back yard, because the nearest range is some distance away. It at least absorbs impact and you can tell if you've hit it fat. But I still prefer grass.) Enjoy, whatever you hit off of! :)

[Fairway_CY]

I understand why guys tend to say that mats suck... but - I feel like, if you can't tell that you're hitting it thin, fat, off the heel, off the toe or whatever... maybe it's not the mats that suck, afterall. I practice on both.

The better range in the area is all mats (unless you purchase a $700 range package - then there is a small grass area). The mats up on the top level are just your standard rubber mats with green carpet. The mats on the lower level also have that softer, 'more grass like but still not even close to grass' portion to the right of the standard green carpet.

The range in the area that actually offers a grass teeing area is a pit. The balls are all beat up and never cleaned. The grass area is nothing more than a severely angled, mostly mud covered spot to the left of the outdated range booths.

I typically practice at the first range off the lower mats. If I feel like I'm struggling with something on the course and I NEED that grass feeling... I'll go to the second range. Thing is... I hit the ball the same at both. I can instantly tell whether it would have been fat when hitting off the mats. As a matter of fact, it's where I actually learned to finally swing down through the ball and take a divot. When I tried to groove that at the grass range... I kept slamming my wrists in to an uneven area and it made me almost FEAR striking down on the ball. Off the mats... I knew that if I had a consistant strike, I'd never hurt my wrists and I learned the sound and feel that the proper swing resulted in.

So... basically... I may be the ONLY person who prefers mats to grass... and that may change if I ever find a range with a nice teeing area. But, I know my swing and I know that, off the mats, if my shot doesn't feel perfect (no stinging from thin shots... no 'thonk' sound from fat shots... etc), they it wouldn't have worked on the course.

CY

PS - I DO prefer, when warming up at a course, to hit off grass rather than mats... but usually only because most courses keep the range and the fairways mowed the same height and it gives me a preview of what I'm likely to be hitting off of later that day.

[doctork]

Count me among the mat-haters, for the reasons mentioned above. I will say that mats have come a long way since they first came into vogue. Newer models are much softer and more realistic, but still no substitute for the real thing.

One more advantage for grass - the chance to hit from different lies, even divots. One downside - when the range is worn out, the divots can make it tough to find a level spot to hit from, especially with longer clubs where you stand farther from the ball.

Cheers,
DoctorK

[The Recreational Golfer]

Though I'm a grass man, there is a mat I use at the range I go to when I need a swing checkup. It's about fifteen feet in front of the equipment repair room and its big plate glass window, which, since the area is covered and in deep shade, acts as a mirror. I'm a big fan of mirror work, since it lets you match up feel with reality.

[kennay92]

my course has 1/4 older simulated grass mats, 1/4 brand spankin new sumulated grass mats,the the rest are the old carpeted ones. There in the process of getting all the carpeted to simulated grass by getting like 3-4 a month. They say it has to go that slow cause each mat is like 4-500 bucks. But the simulated grass ones are pretty good. Carpeted ones you might as well not even practice, it will do nothing for you. Which is why at my course when the range gets busy theres lines behind the simulated grass mats when the carpeted ones are open.

[martytilma]

To me the thing about mats, is that you can never really "Chunk" it. I need to know if I'm hitting the ball crisp or not and I think Mats give you a false sense of that. I will hit off grass no matter how good the mats are any day! JMO

[Kieran123]

I HATE mats with a passion. I usually move onto the grass if possible ( ie. not many others at the range ). If I am on the grass I never top the ball, but for some reason on mats I top it every now and then.

[nevets88]

If you're just starting out, after awhile, you might sense things aren't right with carpet mats compared to grass, but experienced golfers should warn beginners about this more often as I would think that would accelerate the learning process or at least help more than hurt.

It would be against a range's bottom line to stick a warning sign saying hey, our mats aren't exactly the greatest things to learn and practice on and I would think carpet mats in some instances keep people from improving and thus more people going back to ranges.

[sean_miller]

To me the thing about mats, is that you can never really "Chunk" it. I need to know if I'm hitting the ball crisp or not and I think Mats give you a false sense of that. I will hit off grass no matter how good the mats are any day! JMO

I wam up at the mat area, then move over to the "grassy" area. I don't feel like digging 'em out of the dirt on the first few balls.

[Shripe]

I definitely realized the difference yesterday. Considering I've not hit the courses very often quite yet (i.e. real grass, even if it's not maintained very well at my par 3), and I've always been on the mats at another range, I was really shocked by the difference when the free range balls/lessons (which it was too busy for me to obtain a 10-15 min lesson, even if I was one of the first to arrive at the Play Golf America event.. just bad timing >_<) area was elevated grass tees. I couldn't get that kind of pure shot that I'd had on the mats. I lost so much distance, and topped several balls compared to the mats. I really need those lessons.

[ghalfaire]

Nice to see I'm in the majority for a change. I hate mats for all the reasons given above and if that is what the driving range has I just don't warm up. There is another reason I didn't read. I broke a graphite shafted 8 iron once many years ago and returned it for warranty repair (it broke on the course). The first question was "do you ever hit off of mats?". Because I had the manufacture wouldn't honor the warranty. I have heard this isn't the case anymore but I have believe the mats are harder on the equipment than grass and even the hard pan fairways of the south west in summer.

[CStaley]

I hit off grass only. If the range I usually go to is mats only because of rain or something, I just won't use the range. I'll go to the putting or chipping green instead.

[Game]

Mats aren't the end of the world as some would have you think. If you aren't hitting the ball first then it is easy to tell. Your shot should hit the ball first then THUD rather than THUD hit. If you really need more indication you can always practice with a towel behind your ball a little bit to make sure you hit down on the ball first and are not releasing your hands early into a chunk. The only range near me is so big that if they didn't have mats only then they'd probably have dug a hole a mile deep in the earth from divots alone. It's just a matter of making the most of your practice time and being aware of whether or not you're hitting the mat first or the ball first.

[pxc]

I guess I'm a "digger" but mats don't help my shots at all. On the course or at a grass range (or even those mats that have longer blades of fake "grass") I can get some good practice in, but the pool table type mats are useless to me, I can't hit anything.