Your guide to understanding how aim works on artificial turf.
Putting Baseline
Putting is an important stroke in the game of golf, as it can immensely affect a player’s outcome in a single round. Any putting surface, natural or artificial, has essential playability parameters that rule the “putting quality” of such a surface. Bounce, spin, trueness, speed, aim, firmness, and consistency are some of the key attributes that affect “putting quality”.
To ensure our synthetic turf greens putted akin to natural greens we forged standardized testing methods to check both natural and synthetic putting greens. These testing methods help give you the country club golf course experience at your own backyard putting green.
The Putting Green Assessment Tool is designed to impartially measure the effect of different surfaces on the golf ball. The method is automated in such a way that it ignores the human interference and variability. For example, a golfer asked to putt 10 times will likely create 10 different shots. It uses a simple device equipped with a free swinging putter to repeatedly reproduce identical ball strokes for the putting motion, and two launching mechanisms that administer backspin to the ball from ground level and from 2ft from the ground. The device generates data related to ball strike, spin, bounce, and aim. Other tests used in the protocol are familiar to most in the golf industry: speed and firmness(Stimpmeter and TruFirm).
This practice can be used to:
1. Organize a base level for perfect playability of putting greens using natural grass greens at the highest level;
2. Benchmark playability of a particular course vs. the baseline;
3. Benchmark the playability of an artificial putting system vs. natural green;
4. Create product comparison data and advance product development intentionally to achieve a specific target.
How Turf Affects Aim
Aim is a basic skill you have to perfect to get the shot dead on every time, but did you know that the condition of the turf you’re on factors in a role, too? Here are the few elements that influence how the ball reacts when you’ve taken your swing and the ball hits the turf:
Turf Stiffness
The tension of the turf alters how the golf ball will move throughout the putt, if the fiber is not optimized for putting particularly it can give you inconsistent ball movement while rolling ”chatter.”
Friction Properties
Friction properties amid the ball and the turf also notably influence how the ball slides and rolls. If putting surface friction is not optimized it will not accurately transition the club face and spin will create a bouncing effect instead of a smooth roll.
Pile Lay
A natural green is rolled to guarantee the fibers are not standing upright. Correctly infilled putting greens will replicate natural rolled greens and avoid grain inconsistencies.
To test aim and surface variation; we measured the relative variation of standardized putts on a ton of miscellaneous putting surfaces (bermuda, bent, nylon synthetic, polyethylene synthetic, and polypropylene synthetic)
The Southwest Greens Difference
Having a good quality turf will supply you the confidence to know the ball will respond the way it needs to. The type of turf will surely affect your shot. The correctness of the turf lets the aim be as accurate as it can be, and you can now have this on your property with our fan-favorite Golden Bear Turf.
Golden Bear Turf’s aim is scientifically developed and tested to equal pro-quality putting greens. Shot after shot and putt after putt, Golden Bear has the closest perimeter and the best aim of any putting surface. For pro-level consistency, it’s simply the perfect synthetic green for putting aim on the market.