[CAxrrAYN]

Do you prefer practicing from artificial turf mats or natural grass?

I generally find myself practicing on mats because the most conveniently located range in my neck of the woods happens to have mats. There are some nice grass ranges on a couple of courses farther from my home but both are at least a half-hour’s drive away (more if there’s traffic) and so I find myself using the one with mats more out of convenience than anything else since the "mat" range is less than fifteen minutes away.

I know many folks despise mats and years ago when they were little more than fuzzy concrete I felt the same way. But in the last decade or so, the quality of mats has improved quite a bit and the range that I frequent has mats that are very similar to real turf in almost every way except that they don’t produce a divot. They have “grass blades” and enough give in the base that even a firmly struck wedge feels very much like shot struck on a firm fairway.

I know that many people also believe that mats can produce a false feedback which is true in some cases, but I’ve used them so much that I’ve developed a keen sense of what a “good” shot is as opposed to a shot that was the result of skidding the club off the mat. Granted, you have to pay closer attention to sound and feel, but believe me, I really can tell the difference.

Like most other people I prefer real turf, but surprisingly I don’t really feel that there’s much of a difference in the way in which I play after having practiced off of real turf or artificial turf. The way I look at it is that since the ideal shot is “ball first”, what that ball is sitting on is of little importance since my club shouldn’t be contacting that surface until after the ball has left the clubface. The only thing I really need in a good mat is enough “give” so that after I’ve struck the ball, the club “digs down” just as it would on a real fairway, which many of today’s mats allow for quite admirably.

As far as which one I’d choose, if a grass range and a range with mats were the same distance from my house, I’d take the grass range all the time. But I have to say that mats are not that bad these days and have come a long way towards replicating real turf and as such, they’re not a bad alternative.


-JP