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Effects of Practicing on mats

Awkward silence said:
The mat discussion is pretty common. One. My take is this, if you have the ability to hit on decent grass do it and dont waste your time with mats it wont really help you as much as simulating golf as hitting off of grass. If you can only practice on mats it is sure better than nothing. I practice with a net and mat in my back yard and have been striking it better than ever. When on mats you really take mind of hitting the ball first.
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I'd agree with this. Also, the quality of the mat does matter. My local range has these concrete type things which are horrible. I purchased a nice mat at home with a weave, and when you hit fat on that, you really know it (club slows way down).

I think the biggest negative to me when playing on turf coming off the mats, I tend to hit it thin. The concrete mats create way too much "shock" which makes me not want to be steep.
 
Mats are a great last resort. But, as some have already said, I think they can "mask" the fat shot. Because that 1/8-1/2 inch of space behind the ball is astroturf, the clubhead will slide and then make solid contact. In grass, there is no sliding or skidding of the club.
 
I'm not concerned with injury or anything like that but the mats really hide the fat shots and what feels like a decent shot on the mat could be fat or thin on the course. I have a skillz ball first striker mat that I use to try to help with ball first but it's not the best tool out there.

Pretty much all my local ranges are mats only because they are too cheap to buy seed and maintain a grass range. I'm in the road for work a lot though so I will be finding more grass ranges in my travels and taking a pit stop whenever possible!


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I've had similar issues to the OP. I started to put index cards about 2-4 inches behind the ball. This way I know if the shot is heavy. SKLZ also makes a training aid that you can put behind the ball to reinforce ball first contact. Mats aren't ideal, but on Mondays and after rainy days it's all I can get to


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As of this fall I changed my routine and now only hit long irons, hybrids, woods off of mats. For me this seems to be much more effective practice. Mat practice also helps to keep me shallow into the ball. I'm not a mat hater.


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Mats are the only thing that they have at the only range that is within 30 minutes of me, so it's what I'm used to practicing on. I've been up here since 2008 and my handicap has dropped about 4 points in that time, so practicing on them hasn't been bad for my game. I will say that the range I go to has pretty good quality in their mats and switch them out every year or 2. It also helps that I'm shallow on my downswing so I don't hit down into the mats all that much, and practicing on them a good bit has allowed me to get a good sense of when I'm hitting it well versus hitting the mat behind the ball.
 
arydolphin said:
Mats are the only thing that they have at the only range that is within 30 minutes of me, so it's what I'm used to practicing on. I've been up here since 2008 and my handicap has dropped about 4 points in that time, so practicing on them hasn't been bad for my game. I will say that the range I go to has pretty good quality in their mats and switch them out every year or 2. It also helps that I'm shallow on my downswing so I don't hit down into the mats all that much, and practicing on them a good bit has allowed me to get a good sense of when I'm hitting it well versus hitting the mat behind the ball.
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That's how it is for me too. Unfortunately I only have mats to hit off but I don't think it's held me back at all.
 
That's rough. I like the idea of bringing your own quality mat, that seems like it would help. The mats here are probably older than the Y2K bug, to the point that some areas are worn through and its generally no better than a sheet on concrete. They do, however, have a practice hole, and although it's only 125 yards, i've been learning to hit shorter shots with longer clubs which helps a lot. Obviously nothing longer than an 8 iron full swing, but now I'm using quality balls out there and working on approach shots, and that's where I need to be working anyway. Hope that helps?
 
From the range thread here's my session today on a grass range I found while on the road for work.

150 or so balls (3 buckets at this particular range). 2 buckets of nothing but 6-Aw working on approach and scoring clubs. I simply picked two points on the range about 30 yards wide and called that my fairway/landing area/green. Didn't care so much about distance but wanted to keep my ball between those spots where there happened to be a flagged green at about 150yds.

This was a grass range and allowed me to work on good ball striking and focusing in taking divots in front of the ball rather than picking like I would as a result of the mats I typically have to hit off.

Despite the wind I was able to keep the ball on target so I'm quite pleased.

Third bucket was alternating driver and irons. So i would hit a driver and then grab a 7, then driver followed by 9, then driver to 6 and so on until the bucket was finished. This helped me get the feel of following a drive with an iron shot as closely related to real course as I could. I must say it makes a difference to practice this way instead of running through the bag in order. It takes a bit longer but it's more focused and meaningful.

It wasn't perfect because I was wearing down after 100 balls, but this will definitely be my go to range session.

So long as I can keep finding the grass ranges when I'm in the road for work, I look to get 2-3 sessions a week like this.


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Mats really aren't that bad. So much of it is mental. I had a discussion with a friend about this today so we went to cog hill and tested hia theory that mats hurts yout game. We got tqo largw bucketals. One for grass and one for mats and went to work. I put a business card behimd my ball amd he did nothing. I hit the card a few times, but most of my impact was solid. He was the same.

We then went to the grass and I went about business as usually. Hit the ball the same as I wad off the mats. My friend however struggled for the first 20 shots hittimg everything thin. My friend is also a 3 hcp.

What we were able to agree on is that it depends on the player and what's going on betweem their ears.

It's easy to not notice fat shots off of mats if you dont pay attention to impact sound and ball flight. A fat shoy off the mats is the dame as a fat shot off the grass. Doesn't go as far and has no spin. A pure shot still makes a nice zipping noise as the ball heads down range

Rap-a-tap Tappin' on my SG4
 
adamw238 said:
Mats really aren't that bad. So much of it is mental. I had a discussion with a friend about this today so we went to cog hill and tested hia theory that mats hurts yout game. We got tqo largw bucketals. One for grass and one for mats and went to work. I put a business card behimd my ball amd he did nothing. I hit the card a few times, but most of my impact was solid. He was the same.

We then went to the grass and I went about business as usually. Hit the ball the same as I wad off the mats. My friend however struggled for the first 20 shots hittimg everything thin. My friend is also a 3 hcp.

What we were able to agree on is that it depends on the player and what's going on betweem their ears.

It's easy to not notice fat shots off of mats if you dont pay attention to impact sound and ball flight. A fat shoy off the mats is the dame as a fat shot off the grass. Doesn't go as far and has no spin. A pure shot still makes a nice zipping noise as the ball heads down range

Rap-a-tap Tappin' on my SG4
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To really test the theory you'd have to hit exclusively off mats for a few weeks and then try hitting on grass again for a while. Or play a round a week or so.

This way you see the long term effects.

What you essentially did is warmup on a mat and went to grass. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that long term mat use will have negative effects on MY grass game.

It may not have the same effect on everyone, but I'd be really curious to have your 3 hcp friend go to a mat only range 2-3 days a week for 3 months while limiting grass play to once or twice a week max and see if it had any effect.




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dizzyg12 said:
To really test the theory you'd have to hit exclusively off mats for a few weeks and then try hitting on grass again for a while. Or play a round a week or so.

This way you see the long term effects.

What you essentially did is warmup on a mat and went to grass. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that long term mat use will have negative effects on MY grass game.

It may not have the same effect on everyone, but I'd be really curious to have your 3 hcp friend go to a mat only range 2-3 days a week for 3 months while limiting grass play to once or twice a week max and see if it had any effect.




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I see your point. However, I spend all winter, most of spring, every Monday, all of my lessons and 3 nights a week in my garage hitting off of mats with no issues. My friend is in the same predicament and we hit exclusively off of mats from March until May between rounds. I would say on average I hit 60%-70% of my annual golf shots off of mats. And it used to drive me nuts because I had a mental block.

This year being selected for the Morgan Cup Forced me to open my mind and forget about what surface I'm hitting on and a lot of other things about my golf game. I'm now comfortable enough with my swing that I'm not concerned with the surface. A well struck shot is a well struck shot regardless of the surface.

So in a way, Maybe I've proved my theory throughout the course of this season as it pertains to me. My handicap has dropped 6 strokes and I'm practicing full shots less than I did last year.

Can be people become "mat trained"? No doubt. I was one of them. But from my experience, it's more mental than anything else. If anything it'll cause me to hit less fat shots because the feeling a truly fat shot off of a mat is probably one of the worst golf shot feelings ever. Not as bad as hitting the lip of a bunker on your follow through though :act-up:

I'm not discounting anything you say about your experiences. I wish I could hit off of grass all of the time, but that's just not a card that's in the deck for me right now.

I guess it's one of those things where if you're used to it and know what to expect you learn to adapt to it and get on with it. But, everyone is different.

Cheers


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I mostly practice at ranges with mats. But lately I have been arriving to rounds early to hit off grass ranges. I find my ball striking has really improved quite a bit. Too bad all these grass ranges are over 1 hour from me.
 
Sadly there are no grass ranges near me, but I'm still at the point where I'm not even sure a shot from a tee is going to go more than 30 yards :laugh:
 
i only recently got back into golf seriously. played about 3-4 rounds a week the past few months and been pretty random. lots of slicing, fat shots and thin shots. so for my bday missus got me a golfsense and so i decided to set up a net in the garage and have been hitting 150-200 balls a night off a mat while working on my swing using golfsense data.

have improved my overall club head speed across the board by 10mph (always felt i had a slow swing and having the stats to show it and work on it has helped immensely) also hitting off the mat has helped me hit the ball first which was always a huge issue for me in real rounds. (was forever hitting either well before the ball or well after it)

went from struggling to break 110 over 18 holes to consistently in 90s now with a best of 89 the other day. my ball striking is just much more cleaner with far less terrible chunks, clunks, shanks, tops, or grubbers lol.

it took me a while to get used to hitting off the mat but for me just being able to practice my swing and ball striking its been a god send.
 
I hit off mats all winter and spring here in the Northeast, and had a problem hitting everything fat when I finally got out on the course. I blamed the mat practice, but it's probably more of an adjustment to not having a perfect lie for every shot.
 
I recently started taking lessons and I asked my insrtuctor this very thing, he encouraged me to hit off of a mat. His explanation was, anyone can hit off of perfect lies but hitting off the mats gets you used to hiting off of tight lies.
I don't know if it works for everyone but I do feel more confident hitting off of tightly mowed fairways now.
 
I do 95% of my full swing practice in my garage (on a mat obviously) and I have not noticed an issue going to grass. I'm not much of a divot taker to begin with, I'll take one occasionally but it's never been a focus of mine to take one. There is a grass range 30 minutes away that I will try and go to once a month to take some swings off grass, also to see the ball flight for more than 6 feet.
 
O'Carroll said:
I hit off mats all winter and spring here in the Northeast, and had a problem hitting everything fat when I finally got out on the course. I blamed the mat practice, but it's probably more of an adjustment to not having a perfect lie for every shot.
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The crazy thing is I can hit off wonky lies without a problem. Probably more focused and swinging for contact. When I get that perfect lie with the ball in the middle if a flat fairway, I end up mishitting it somehow.





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I've been hitting lots of balls off the back lawn into the fairway/green I have mowed in the field. It's been excellent practice and I feel like my stroke is coming along nicely. However, the wife has been voicing complaints about the divots all over the lawn... so I picked up one of those small Callaway mats and it's working out pretty well. I hit off the mat on the lawn and hit off the grass out in the field coming back - nobody cares about divots in the field. Best of both worlds.
 
Effects of practicing on mats = sore wrists, elbows and shoulders and a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER chance of getting injured.

I stopped hitting from mats because of the above and have pretty much banned them from my golf dealings.
 
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